.I^MfdJi 


i 


n 


W.    E.    FORD 

A  BIOGRAPHY 


fri'tti  afirntJ  .ykeJrh  at  tkeMfe  f}^' 1 5  iff  an  unhnoum  (irltM 


W.E.Ford:  A  Biography 


BY 

J.    D.    BERESFORD 

AND 

KENNETH   RICHMOND 


WITH  PHOTOGRAVURE  FRONTISPIECE 


LONDON:    48  PALL  MALL 

W.    COLLINS    SONS    &    CO.   LTD. 

GLASGOW   MELBOURNE  AUCKLAND 


Copyright  1917 


PREFATORY   NOTE 

A  DRAWING  in  Mrs.  Ford's  possession,  representing 
1  ord  at  about  the  age  of  fifteen,  has  been  deliberately 
chosen  in  preference  to  later  photographs  for  the 
frontispiece  of  this  book.  This  picture  of  the  boy  will 
have  a  novel  interest  for  most  of  those  who  knew  and 
admired  the  man ;  but  there  is  another  reason  for  the 
choice.  The  drawing  has  in  it  the  spirit  of  Ford's 
personality  and  character  ;  the  photographs  have  not. 

The  authors  have  to  thank  Mrs.  Ford  for  her  kindness 
hi  revising  the  work  before  publication,  and  in  affording 
material  help  as  regards  the  collation  of  facts  ;  at  the 
same  time  they  wish  to  take  all  responsibility  in  matters 
of  conjecture  and  interpretation,  inseparable  from  any 
bat  a  coldly  formal  biography,  but  not  fitly  to  be 
presented  as  though  based  upon  Mrs.  Ford's  authority. 

It  has  not  fallen  within  the  scope  of  this  book  to 
present  Ford's  system  of  thought  as  a  coherent  whole, 
b  it  it  is  hoped  that  this  may  be  attempted  in  a  later 
v<  )lume  ;  the  co-operation  is  cordially  invited  of  those 
who  at  any  time  belonged  to  his  circle,  and  any  letters 
b(  aring  definitely  upon  his  position  as  a  thinker  will  be 
W'ilcomed.  These  may  be  sent  care  of  the  publishers. 
Any  letters  in  Ford's  own  writing  will  be  copied  and 
carefully  returned. 


21  n 


CONTENTS 


PART  I.    A  PERSONAL  IMPRESSION 
By  J.  D.  Beresford 


CI  AP.  I. 
CI  AP.  II. 
CI  AP.    III. 


3 

14 
28 


PART  II.    A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY 
By  Kenneth  Richmond 


CHVP.   IV.             . 

47 

CHVP.   V.              .                .                . 

.        69 

CHAP.   VI.             . 

95 

CHAP.   VII. 

121 

CH.\P.   VIII.         .                .        \      . 

•       153 

CIL.P.    IX.            . 

.       194 

CH/  P.   X.              .                .               .               . 

.       224 

PART  in.    A  FEW  NOTES  ON  FORD'S 
PHILOSOPHY 

By  J.  D.  Beresford 


CHAP.  XL 


257 


▼il 


PART  I 

A  PERSONAL  IMPRESSION 
By  J.  D.  Beresford 


CHAPTER  I 

Ir  we  wanted  an  excuse  for  publishing  this  Hfe  of 
\\ .  E.  Ford,  I  should  look  for  it  in  the  fact  that  bio- 
gi  iphy  is  in  the  main  didactic,  a  fact  that  helps  to 
e.\ plain  the  usual  choice  of  a  subject  who  has  succeeded 
in  hfe.  Success  in  this  connection,  however,  has  a 
sonewhat  limited  meaning,  and  implies  the  making 
of  a  mark  in  public  life  or  the  accomplishment  of  some 
ac-iievement  in  the  public  service — the  invention  of 
th<i  Davy  lamp,  for  example.  The  more  obvious 
reason  for  this  choice  of  subject  is  that  the  book 
receives  a  preliminary  advertisement.  There  is  a 
demand  for  the  lives  of  notable  men,  simply  because 
thc-y  were  notable.  But  I  submit  that  the  moral 
pui-pose  of  biography  imderlies  the  demand  also. 
As  in  the  old  Simday-school  books,  the  clear  indica- 
tion remains  prominent :  *  See  what  comes  of  being 
go(d  ! '  or  to  adapt  the  lesson  to  present  conditions  : 
*  Ste  what  comes  of  being  clever !  '  Nevertheless, 
whin  only  the  cleverness  that  leads  to  commercial 
suc:ess  is  the  biographer's  field  of  study,  he  is  still 
under  the  influence  of  the  old  tradition,  and  takes  care 
to  omit  the  suggestion  that  his  subject  was  an  un- 
principled swindler.     If  the  truth  is  altogether  too 


4  W.  E.  FORD 

obvious,  he  dwells  on  the  gentleness  of  his  relations  in 
private  life.  It  has  become  almost  a  convention  that 
the  financier  who  controls  the  money-market  and 
wreaks  death  and  destitution  without  a  moment's 
consideration,  is  in  private  life  a  devoted  husband  and 
father.  I  cannot  recall  a  single  instance  of  a  bio- 
graphy that  depicted  the  reverse  attitude  ;  but  the 
life  of  a  man  who  brought  happiness  to  the  many 
and  was  a  perfect  beast  in  his  own  home,  would  make 
very  interesting  reading. 

An  exception  to  the  '  success  '  rule,  and  one  that 
upholds  my  present  contention,  is  to  be  found  in  the 
demand  for  the  lives  of  men  who  were  in  no  way 
celebrated  but  were  unquestionably  '  good.'  The 
lives  of  missionaries  and  obscure  ministers  mostly 
find  a  sale  that  justifies  publication.  Some  deep 
instinct  in  mankind  looks  for  and  finds  satisfaction  in 
salvation  by  morality  ;  and  the  contemplation  of  that 
salvation  achieved  by  another,  either  affords  us  a 
temporary  relief  from  the  terrible  strain  of  being  good 
ourselves,  or  soothes  us  with  the  certainty  that  we, 
too,  shall  eventually  profit  by  our  renunciations. 
(It  is  worth  while  to  note,  incidentally,  that  the  form 
of  'goodness'  held  up  for  example  in  works  of  thi-. 
type  is  nearly  always  negative;  that  is  to  say,  b;/ 
renunciation.  John  Knox  and  his  like  had  mor:; 
influence  on  the  English  Prayer-book  and  the  Englis  i 
character,  than  all  the  mystics.) 

The  third  general  category  of  biography — the  lijc; 


A  PERSONAL  IMPRESSION  5 

of  the  creative  artist — achieves  the  ethical  only  by 
omission.  And  when  a  man  is  confronted  with  the 
task  of  depicting  the  life  of,  say,  Francois  Villon  or 
Paul  Verlaine,  the  ethical  motive  has  to  be  ignored, 
save  by  the  implication  that  Verlaine,  for  example, 
mi^ht  have  been  a  still  better  poet  if  he  had  been  a 
be  ter  man.  Nevertheless,  the  trace  of  the  tradition 
reraains  in  any  biography  that  is  not,  quite  frankly,  a 
ch)  onique  scandaleuse.  We  know  perfectly  well,  now, 
thc-t  William  Godwin  was  a  dreadful  rascal,  but  we 
do  not  know  it  from  reading  Mr.  Kegan  Paul's  life  of 
him.  Yes,  even  in  the  biographies  of  the  creative 
artsts,  the  great  attempt  is  always  implicit — often, 
of  :ourse,  by  the  antithetical  method  of  *  Oh  !  what  a 
pit;^'  We  may  content  ourselves  with  the  reflection 
that  the  idle  apprentice  gets  to  the  devil  all  right, 
though  he  may  have  written  great  poetry  or  great 
muiic  on  the  way. 

All  this  prelude  is  by  way  of  justification  for  an 
experiment  in  writing  the  life  of  a  man  who  was 
coirpletely  unknown  to  the  general  public,  and  who 
diecL  in  Japan,  not  in  the  effort  to  illuminate  the 
heahen,  but  rather  to  find  illumination  for  himself. 
The  name  of  William  Elphinstone  Ford  will  evoke  no 
response  in  the  minds  of  newspaper  readers.  He 
published  no  book,  he  was  not  an  explorer,  nor  an 
inventor,  nor  a  politician,  he  was  connected  with  no 
rehgious  society,  and  his  one  real  experiment  in 
education  was,   from  the  outside  point  of  view,   a 


6  W.  E.  FORD 

failure.  And  yet  Mr.  Richmond  and  I  are  agreed 
that  Ford  had  a  rare  genius,  and  that  even  the  Httle 
we  may  be  able  to  record  of  his  life  and  principles  has 
a  peculiar  value  at  the  present  time,  and  will  have  a 
still  greater  value  a  few  years  hence.  We  have,  in 
fact,  the  prevailing  excuse  that  this  sketch  of  Ford's 
life  is  in  the  best  and  widest  sense  of  the  word — 
didactic.  We  sincerely  believe  that  his  theories  of 
education  and  conduct  are  worthy  of  the  closest 
attention. 

Nevertheless,  to  be  quite  honest,  the  inducement 
that  led  me  to  accept  a  share  in  this  book  when  my 
friend  Kenneth  Richmond  suggested  the  experiment, 
was  not  afforded  by  the  considerations  I  have  just 
advanced.  Those  came  later,  when  my  collaborator 
and  I  had  seriously  to  consider  the  possibility  of  our 
book  being  published.  In  the  first  place,  I  was. 
tempted  by  a  recognition  of  the  fact  that  Ford's 
theories  seemed  already  to  be  spreading  abroad.  In 
art,  in  fiction,  in  philosophy,  in  sociology,  and  even  in 
such  sciences  as  psychology,  I  was  being  constantly 
confronted  with  a  half-grasped  assumption  that  F, 
recognised  as  having  some  sort  of  relation  with  th;; 
speculations  of  Ford. 

To  a  certain  extent  this  has  no  doubt  arisen  fror  i 
my  own  attitude  of  expectation.  I  have  found  th(; 
thing  I  looked  for,  and  perhaps  exaggerated  Htm 
significance  of  the  indications.  But  I  am  convinced 
that  when  every  allowance  has  been  made  for  my 


A  PERSONAL  IMPRESSION  7 

personal  prejudice,  sufficient  evidence  remains  to 
prove  that  civilisation  is  moving  towards  the  develop- 
ment of  a  new  expression  in  religion. 

Briefly  and  very  indefinitely  stated,  this  change  is 
f-om  a  negative  to  a  positive  attitude  towards  God  ; 
f  -om  a  morality  that  depends  upon  repression  to  one 
tiiat  depends  upon  the  liberation  of  impulse. 

I  can  well  imagine  that  the  captious  will  at  once 
expostulate  that  this  principle  is  as  old  as  history  ; 
that  it  has  been  attempted  in  practice  and  has  led  to 
nothing  but  licence,  debauchery  and  collapse.  Further, 
that  it  is  the  *  excuse  '  of  every  artist — an  amoral 
creature  by  hypothesis — and  was  the  foundation  of 
Nietzsche's  cruel  and  subversive  philosophy. 

My  single  reply  to  these  objections  practically  covers 
the  whole  ground.  It  rests  upon  the  assertion  that 
by  the  liberation  of  impulse  or  free  expression.  Ford 
intended  not  the  impulses  and  expressions  of  animal 
desires,  but  those  of  what  he  calls  the  *  primitive  urge 
behind  life.'  And  this  differentiation  becomes  impor- 
t  int  when  we  realise  that  he  regarded  that  urge  as 
invariably  tending  towards  development,  even  if  such 
development  might  not,  under  present  conditions,  be 
generally  recognised  as  *  goodness  '  in  the  sense  of 
conventional  morality.  In  effect  he  had  a  higher 
opinion  of  the  universal  content  than  had  Nietzsche. 
Ford,  himself,  was  the  exponent  of  a  naturally  moral 
t  mdency,  and  he  had  faith  in  the  virtue  of  his  own 
ijnpulses  as  the  delivery  of  an  essentially  beneficial 


8  W.  E.  FORD 

urge.  He  might  perhaps  have  defined  his  aim  as  the 
will  to  expression ;  he  would  certainly  not  have 
defined  it  as  the  will  to  power. 

But  if  he  had  gone  still  further  and  accepted  the 
definition  of  goodness  commonly  assumed  by  the 
churches,  his  principle  would  still  have  differed 
radically  from  theirs.  For  the  practice  of  all  present 
day  religions  is  founded  on  the  commandments 
beginning  '  thou  shalt  not,'  treating  God  as  law- 
giver and  judge,  a  creature  swift  to  anger  and  to 
condemnation.  And  Ford  intuitively  rejected  a 
process  of  virtue  that  advanced  by  elimination ;  as 
though  *  goodness  '  were  a  liquor  that  must  be  end- 
lessly strained  and  refined.  He  preferred  in  all  his 
analogies  some  figure  that  presented  the  thought  of 
encouragement  and  growth ;  and  I  think  that  by 
developing  '  free  expression,'  he  may  have  meant  that 
we  should  concentrate  our  energies  on  the  delivery 
of  the  finer  impulses  rather  than  on  the  suppression  of 
the  baser.  I  say  he  may  have  intended  this,  but  I  have 
been  greatly  handicapped  by  the  fact  that  I  have  no 
written  material  of  his,  not  so  much  as  a  single  note. 
For  all  my  exposition,  I  have  had  to  depend  on  my 
memory  of  a  few  discussions  between  us  (one  of  them 
lasted  for  five  hours),  and  I  find  it  exceedingly  diffi- 
cult, now,  to  separate  my  own  contribution  to  his 
theory  of  life.  Ford  was  so  apparently  ductible  in 
argument.  He  had  a  wonderful  gift  for  making  one 
state  his  own  point  of  view.     If  he  had  been  more 


A  PERSONAL  IMPRESSION  9 

dogmatic,  my  present  task  would  have  been  an  easier 
one.  .  .  . 

But  I  am  afraid  that  I  am  laying  too  much  stress  on 
jDhilosophy  in  this  introduction,  forasmuch  as  the 
^^Teater  part  of  the  book — all  Mr.  Richmond's  contri- 
l)ution,  in  fact — will  hardly  touch  on  that  develop- 
ment of  Ford's  thought.  Without  question  Ford's 
lirst  claim  to  attention  is  as  a  pioneer  in  education, 
cind  I  do  not  wish  for  a  moment  to  put  that  claim  in  the 
background.  At  the  same  time  I  feel  that  I  am  not 
a  reliable  exponent  of  the  educational  theory  and 
method  which  are  elucidated  in  some  detail  by 
]\Ir.  Richmond  in  chapters  iv.-x.  My  hesitation  in 
this  is  due  to  a  realisation  that  while  I  have  had  no 
experience  that  qualifies  me  to  give  an  opinion,  I  am 
an  ardent  enthusiast  for  the  principles  Ford  endea- 
voured to  put  into  practice.  And  as  your  professional 
educationist  has  little  tolerance  for  lay  enthusiasm, 
I  am  particularly  anxious  not  to  prejudice  him  from 
the  outset  by  a  discussion  of  technicalities  which 
might  betray  my  ignorance.  Nevertheless,  education 
enters  the  province  that  I  have  made  my  own  in  this 
experimental  biography  ;  and  in  that  connection  I  feel 
entitled  to  express  a  general  opinion  that  involves  no 
discussion  of  detail. 

For  I  see  that  any  hope  for  a  practical  exposition 
01  Ford's  philosophy  will  be  found  in  the  schoolroom. 
Few  adults  are  teachable,  but  most  children.  And  I 
bilieve    that    many    enlightened    educationists    are 


10  W.  E.  FORD 

beginning  to  grasp  the  truth  that  the  road  to  know- 
ledge is  not  by  the  way  of  memorising  facts,  but  by  the 
imderstanding  and  relation  of  facts.  The  obvious 
difficulty  which,  as  Mr.  Richmond  shows,  confronts  the 
pioneer  of  this  theory,  is  the  argument  that  a  truly 
synthetic  education  does  not  fit  a  child  to  enter  the 
commercial  and  competitive  conditions  of  modem  life. 
There  may  be  practical  means  of  overcoming  this 
difficulty.  I  leave  that  to  the  expert.  But  my 
own  hope  is  foimded  on  the  belief  that  the  children 
of  the  new  race  will  alter  the  conditions.  If  we 
have  faith  in  Ford's  theories  of  education,  philo- 
sophy and  morals,  we  must  be  courageous  enough  to 
risk  the  immediate  financial  success  of  the  younger 
generations. 

Before  I  leave  this  introduction,  I  want  to  make 
two  further  comments  ;  and  the  first  is  with  reference 
to  the  great  European  War.  Ford  died  before  August 
1914,  and  I  have,  therefore,  no  direct  opinion  of  his 
with  regard  to  it ;  but  I  think  his  probable  attitude 
can  be  quite  definitely  inferred. 

Personally,  I  regard  this  war  as  evidencing  the  final 
failure  of  the  Christian  principle  of  suppression. 
How  far  that  principle  derives  from  Christ  and  not 
from  the  embroideries  of  the  theologian,  I  have  no 
time  to  discuss.  The  one  absurd  justification  for 
fighting  which  has  been  advanced  by  the  churches, 
rests  on  the  text,  '  I  came  to  bring  not  peace  but  a 
sword/   a  statement   conflicting  so   intolerably  with 


A  PERSONAL  IMPRESSION  ii 

Christ's  general  doctrine,  that  we  can  only  suppose  it 
to  have  been  either  an  interpolation  by  a  later  hand, 
or,  as  seems  more  probable,  a  prophecy  and  not  an 
c.ffirmation  of  purpose.  In  any  case  the  quotation  of 
this  one  text  is  obviously  futile  as  a  defence.  It 
c  annot  be  separated  from  the  body  of  Christ's  teaching. 
.Vnd  I  maintain  that  the  man  who  attempts  to  justify 
Ids  attitude  as  a  militant  with  his  attitude  towards 
Christianity,  is  incapable  of  intellectual  or  spiritual 
honesty.  If  he  believes  that  England  was  bound  in 
honour  to  intervene  in  the  first  place,  to  carry  on  the 
struggle  by  every  means  in  her  power,  and  finally  to 
(ontinue  it  until  she  is  able  to  dictate  the  terms  of 
l)eace,  then  let  that  man  be  honest  enough  to  admit 
that  the  ethic  of  Christianity  is  not  apphcable  to 
])resent  conditions.  That  conclusion,  as  I  have  said, 
is  my  own,  but  I  know  that  Ford  would  have  agreed 
\rith  me. 

I  believe  that  this  war  w£is  necessary,  and  I  believe 
that  it  will  be  beneficial  to  mankind  as  a  whole.  It 
has  arisen,  all  modem  wars  have  arisen,  from  individual 
I  lid  national  inhibitions.  Suppression  and  conceal- 
ment are  the  common  tools  of  all  diplomacy.  Race 
hatreds  and  jealousies  arise  only  from  misunder- 
standings and  cowardice.  Everywhere  the  influence 
c  f  the  old  principle  of  thrusting  down  evil  rather  than 
encouraging  good,  has  led  to  morbid  desires  and 
rational  hysteria.  And  beyond  a  certain  point,  the 
national  body  must  rid  itself  of  these  morbid  secre- 


12  W.  E.  FORD 

tions  or  go  mad.  Germany  had  reached  her  Hmit  of 
endurance,  and  her  hysteria  has  found  an  expression 
in  her  hatred  of  England — the  forced,  unnatural 
expression  of  the  thwarted.  Nevertheless,  there  is  a 
hope  that  this  war  will  act  as  a  purge  that  will  enable 
Europe  for  a  time  to  see  more  clearly.  Already  there 
is  a  faintly  discernible  movement  towards  a  greater 
honesty ;  towards  liberation.  But  only  by  the 
education  of  children  on  new  Unes  will  this  slight  gain 
be  made  good.  If  we  are  in  future  to  teach  the  funda- 
mental ethic  of  Christianity,  it  must  be  restated.  It 
is  useless  for  us  to  love  our  enemies,  if  we  must  first 
learn  to  hate  ourselves.  If  the  Pharisee's  self- 
righteousness  was  false,  so  also  was  the  self-abasement 
of  the  publican.  .  .  . 

My  second  comment  is  an  anticipation  of  the  con- 
ventional test  that  will  surely  be  applied  to  Ford. 
If  he  was  such  a  great  man,  the  critic  will  say,  how  is 
it  that  he  had  no  influence  on  his  contemporaries  ? 
My  reply  is,  firstly,  that  he  had  considerable  influence 
on  his  immediate  circle — as  this  little  endeavour  to 
interpret  him  ought  to  demonstrate.  And,  secondly, 
that  this  influence  was  restricted  simply  because  he 
had  no  craze  for  publicity.  For  while  he  was  singularly 
free  from  any  affectation  of  modesty,  he  had  none  of 
the  convinced  self-righteousness  of  the  propagandist. 
He  lived  his  own  philosophy  by  simply  being  himself — 
an  imcommonly  hard,  perhaps  an  impossible,  task 
for  any  public  man  in  modem  conditions.     Possibly 


A  PERSONAL  IMPRESSION  13 

W.    E.    Gladstone   came   as   near  the   ideal   as   any 
prominent  statesman  of  recent  years. 

In  conclusion,  I  relinquish,  with  a  sigh  of  dissatisfac- 
tion, this  task  of  trying  to  present  Ford.  I  feel  that 
I  have  failed  to  render  him  with  anything  approach- 
i]ig  justice  ;  and  I  console  myself  with  the  reflection 
that  Mr.  Richmond's  chapters  on  education  are  a  real 
contribution  to  knowledge.  We  have  candidly  ad- 
riitted,  Richmond  and  I,  that  this  book  is  an  experi- 
ment, and  that  we  are  none  too  pleased  with  the  form 
ir  has  taken.  But  while  Ford's  philosophy  may  need 
endless  elaboration,  his  educational  theory  and 
practice  are,  we  feel  assured,  the  methods  of  the 
future — let  us  hope  of  the  immediate  future. 


CHAPTER  II 

I  FIRST  met  Ford  on  the  evening  of  the  22nd  of  June 
1897.  He,  like  myself,  had  taken  advantage  of  the 
Diamond  Jubilee  celebrations  to  escape  from  London  ; 
but  his  purpose  and  mine  had  little  in  common. 

I  was  working  in  an  architect's  office  in  Moorgate 
Street  at  that  time  ;  and  as  pageants  and  processions 
have  never  interested  me  (I  lived  for  eighteen  consecu- 
tive years  in  London  without  seeing  a  Lord  Mayor's 
Show),  I  had  profited  by  the  holiday  to  go  up  the  river 
for  three  days  with  a  friend  from  the  office,  and  his 
brother,  a  sailor  in  the  merchant  service.  After  a 
damp,  depressing  Sunday  that  was  impossible  for 
boating,  we  had  a  very  good  holiday.  By  a  fluke  we 
saw  the  Queen  leave  Windsor  on  Monday  morning — 
we  had  gone  up  into  the  town  to  buy  provisions — 
and  on  the  day  of  the  procession  we  had  a  long  jolly 
day  saiHng  down  from  Bray  to  Halliford,  which  had 
been  our  point  of  departure.  My  two  companions 
were  returning  to  town  that  night,  but  they  advised  me 
to  stay  down  at  Shepperton.  My  friend  from  the 
office  was  always  very  thoughtful  for  me,  and  he  was 
afraid  that  there  might  be  great  crowds  in  the  street 
to  see  the  illuminations,  and  that  I,  with  my  game 

14 


A  PERSONAL  IMPRESSION  15 

leg,  might  find  some  difficulty  in  getting  back  to  my 
lodgings  near  King's  Cross. 

So  I  stayed  the  night  at  the  Railway  Hotel  at 
Shepperton — a  queer  little  inn  kept  by  a  Swiss  named 
Aubert.     And  it  was  there  that  I  met  Ford. 

He  was  the  only  other  visitor,  and  according  to  the 
etiquette  of  the  Auberts  (I  stayed  there  many  times 
afterwards)  he  had  a  right  to  the  use  of  the  dark  httle 
sitting-room  by  virtue  of  the  fact  of  his  prior  arrival. 
I  was  introduced  by  permission,  chiefly  on  the  ground, 
I  fancy,  that  this  was  a  special  occasion.  The  common 
meeting  place  of  the  inn's  visitors  was  a  little  parlour 
behind  the  bar. 

It  must  have  been  nearly  nine  o'clock  when  I  was 
hitroduced  to  Ford  by  Mrs.  Aubert,  who  was  English 
and  phlegmatic,  although  she  always  wore  an  air  of 
being  slightly  offended,  even  by  the  most  reasonable, 
not  to  say  profitable,  request.  I  was  probably  pre- 
sented as  '  another  gentleman  '  ;  and  her  '  if  you 
wouldn't  mind  'is  'aving  supper  in  'ere,'  was  spoken, 
no  doubt,  with  her  usual  effect  of  faint  resentment. 
To  me,  she  had  spoken  of  the  occupant  of  the  sitting- 
re  om  as  if  he  had  been  the  great  Panjandrum  himself. 
I  had  felt  that  my  intrusion  was  quite  unwarranted, 
uiitH  I  in  turn  figured  as  '  another  gentleman  '  with 
SI  ggested  rights  and  dignities. 

The  lamp  was  lighted — it  was  dark  in  that  room  at 
midday  ;  either  the  Swiss  or  the  EngHsh  influence 
insisted  on  two  pairs  of  curtains  and  a  lace  muslin 


i6  W.  E.  FORD 

blind  for  the  insufficient  window — and  as  Ford  got  up 
when  I  was  presented,  his  face  was  in  the  shadow  of 
the  painted  cardboard  lampshade  when  he  answered. 
I  thought  him  a  little  morose.  He  mumbled  some- 
thing that  I  did  not  catch. 

I  was  twenty-four  then,  and  had  much  the  same 
illusions  with  regard  to  chance  meetings  that  H.  G. 
Wells  has  described  as  those  of  Mr.  Polly.  I  looked 
forward  to  them  romantically,  but  unlike  Mr.  Polly 
I  saw  my  own  part  as  furnishing  the  effective  element 
of  surprise.  I  based  my  dreaming  on  that  episode 
described  by  Borrow  in  The  Bible  in  Spain  ;  and  in 
my  adaptation  of  the  incident,  I  imaginatively  tramped 
England  in  corduroys  and  hobnails,  and  astounded 
some  travelling  scholar  by  an  erudition  greater  than 
his  own.  I  must  add,  however,  that  my  erudition 
was  non-existent — I  invented  that. 

And  my  first  impressions  of  Ford,  and  our  earlier 
conversation  that  night,  were  slightly  prejudiced  by 
this  attitude  of  mine.  I  was  only  an  architect's 
assistant  on  a  salary  of  £2,  los.  a  week,  and  I 
wanted  to  pretend  that  I  was  something  more  than 
that. 

After  Mrs.  Aubert  had  gone  to  get  my  inevitable 
bacon  and  eggs,  I  started  a  man-of-the-world  con- 
versation with  a  criticism  of  her  manner.  Ford  was 
not  responsive.  I  was  an  egregious  young  ass  ;  and 
he  was  shy  with  casual  strangers,  and  must  from  the 
outset  have  been  prepared  for  boredom.    The  effect 


A  PERSONAL  IMPRESSION  17 

of  his  polite  replies,  however,  produced  a  result  he  had 
net  designed. 

I  have  always  been  very  sensitive  to  criticism. 
Any  one  can  shut  me  up  in  conversation.  Underneath 
that  romantic  desire  to  shine  in  any  society,  I  carry 
th  I  knowledge  of  my  own  incapacity ;  a  knowledge 
th  it  I  have  ever  candidly  faced  and  admitted  in  the 
secret  colloquies  of  myself  and  my  own  mind.  And 
Ford,  who  was  also  a  sensitive  creature  of  another 
ty])e,  discerned  my  hurt  when  I  suddenly  lapsed  into  a 
she  med  silence  ;  and  he  sought  to  repair  his  fault  by 
beginning  to  talk. 

I  did  not  see  at  the  time  how  that  opening  of  an 
acquaintance  displayed  an  essential  difference  between 
him  and  me.  We  were  both  shy  and  sensitive,  but 
my  eyes  were  turned  inwards,  his  outwards.  When 
he  did  not  respond,  I  began  to  criticise  my  own  feeble- 
ness ;  and  if  our  positions  had  been  reversed,  I  should 
never  have  discerned,  as  he  did,  the  reason  for  the 
silence  that  threatened  to  fall  upon  us.  Again,  where 
I  should  have  reflected  the  inferred  attitude  of  my 
company,  he  retained  his  individuality,  and  sought 
to  cKamine  the  character  of  those  with  whom  he  was 
confronted.  His  sympathies  never  influenced  him,  as 
my  sympathies  influence  me,  to  act  a  part. 

Hi  began  to  talk  about  the  river,  and  I  responded 
to  t  lat.  I  know  the  river  well,  and  my  replies  at 
first  were,  I  suspect,  largely  topographical — another 
boast  of  knowledge.    But  presently  he  touched  me 

B 


i8  W.  E.  FORD 

to  hesitating  confidences.  There  were  things  I  had 
felt  about  the  Thames  that  I  could  never  confess  to 
any  of  my  friends  in  the  office  ;  things  that  I  had 
no  language  to  explain  to  them  or,  indeed,  to  any  one. 
And  Ford's  genius,  in  some  wonderful  way,  perceived 
the  beginnings  of  those  perceptions  in  me.  Ht; 
touched,  by  way  of  opening,  on  the  history  of  the  river, 
of  the  old  encampment  at  Sinodun  Hill,  for  instance  ; 
and  then  dared  to  expose  the  sensitive  skin  of  m}^ 
romantic  temperament  by  asking  me  if  I  had  ever 
seen  the  mysteries  that  descend  upon  the  '  depths  of 
water  stilled  at  even.' 

My  reply  was  inadequate.  I  knew,  but  I  had  no 
words  to  tell  my  knowledge.  I  was  confused  because 
I  realised  my  inability  to  describe  my  emotions.  And 
I  was  horribly  handicapped  by  my  desire  to  prove  that 
I  was  capable  of  appreciating  his  suggestions.  The 
Une  from  The  Blessed  Damozel  was  unknown  to  m(;, 
although  from  his  delivery  I  recognised  it  as  a 
quotation. 

Nevertheless,  I  began  to  expand.  I  described  an 
adventure  I  and  two  other  men  had  had  at  Sutton 
Courtney,  when  after  a  long  day  of  rain  and  wind,  \\e 
had  crept  up  the  backwater  at  sunset  to  find  a  campL  ig 
ground,  and  had  come  wonderfully  upon  an  eld 
mill,  and  floated  into  an  enceinte  of  high  resonant 
walls  that  filled  us  with  a  fear  of  our  own  whispering 
voices. 
*    I  put  the  story  into  clumsy,  colloquial  phrases  that 


A  PERSONAL  IMPRESSION  19 

conveyed  nothing  of  the  place  nor  of  my  own  feelings  ; 
bit  Ford  understood. 

And  from  that  we  came  to  a  discussion  of  literature, 
spoiled  at  first  by  the  remains  of  my  romantic  desire 
to  appear  well-read.  I  tried  to  make  the  best  of  the 
ht  :le  reading  I  had,  but  it  was  hopelessly  inadequate, 
ani  when  I  found  myself  referring  all  his  openings  to 
m}'  Hmited  authorities,  I  honestly  shifted  my  groimd 
ani  confessed  my  lack  of  education.  Ford  had  put 
mc  almost  at  my  ease  by  then. 

The  confession  was  not  a  new  one,  but  it  had  often 
taken  the  form  of  a  boast.  Chronologically  it  ran  : 
Four  years  at  a  dame's  school ;  a  year  and  a  half  at 
Ouiidle  under  Mungo  Park ;  four  months  at  home 
with  occasional  lessons  from  a  neighbouring  parson 
wh )  was  trying  to  educate  his  own  son  ;  one  term  at 
a  private  school  in  Norfolk ;  and  finally,  four  terms  at 
the  King's  School,  Peterborough,  before,  at  sixteen, 
I  b  ;gan  the  first  approach  to  architecture  by  studying 
bui:ding  construction  at  the  Peterborough  Art  School. 
As  I  matter  of  fact  I  was  not  yet  seventeen  when  my 
first  set  of  articles  was  signed  with  the  Diocesan 
Surveyor,  whose  offices  at  Stamford — eight  miles  from 
my  home — I  visited  three  times  a  week  for  nearly  two 
yeais.  It  was  a  fair  subject  for  boast,  that  haphazard 
eduration,  calculated  to  develop  nothing  so  much  as 
the  habit  of  slacking.  I  always  left  my  listener  to 
dra\/  his  own  inference ;  but  my  usual  attitude  of 
'Here  I  am'  was,  on  this  occasion,  perhaps,  a  trifle 


20  W.  E.  FORD 

plaintive.  I  may  have  been  imcertain  whether  my 
point  of  arrival  was  not  the  too  obvious  result  of  my 
lack  of  training. 

Ford  overlooked  the  effect.  He  was  interested  in 
the  cause  and  began  to  question  me.  And  if  I  was 
somewhat  eager  for  the  final  verdict,  for  some  assurance 
that  I  had  emerged  creditably  from  this  welter  of 
various  disciplines,  I  was  flattered  by  his  interest, 
and  proud  to  answer  his  questions  with  a  readiness 
that  displayed  my  own  criticism  of  the  scholastic 
methods  I  had  suffered.  The  verdict  never  came.  In 
place  of  that,  he  opened  my  eyes  to  possibilities  I  had 
never  then  considered. 

His  suggestions  came  to  me  then  in  the  guise  of  a 
revelation  ;  not  because  he  threw  them  off  with  any 
air  of  being  sent  to  lighten  my  darkness,  but  because 
my  mind  was  ready  to  take  his  point  of  view.  I  was 
suddenly  hungry  for  this  new  food,  although  I  had 
not  before  been  aware  of  any  appetite. 

It  is  difficult  now  to  separate  the  particular  sug- 
gestions he  made  that  night  from  the  completer 
argument  I  heard  him  set  out  in  later  conversations  ; 
but  certain  of  his  simpler  theses  must  have  been 
touched  upon  at  our  first  meeting.  Indeed,  it  seem . 
to  me  that  I  can  recall  precisely  the  tones  of  his  cleai , 
gentle  voice,  a  little  muffled  by  the  apparatus  cf 
hangings  in  that  dark  sitting-room — even  the  fireplac:; 
was  elaborately  hung  and  curtained.  We  had  finishe  .1 
supper  and  he  was  sitting  on  the  sofa,  his  face  a  littJo 


A  PERSONAL  IMPRESSION  21 

in  the  shadow.  And,  to  me,  the  voice  was  the  mouth- 
piece of  an  oracle  that  amazingly  delivered  the  stifled 
knowledge  of  my  subconscious  thought. 

No  doubt  the  rendering  is  characteristically  my 
o\m,  and  Richmond,  who  was  Ford's  disciple  in  a  sense 
that  I  never  could  be,  will  perhaps  object  that  my 
translation  has  lost  the  spirit  of  the  original.  Never- 
theless, I  do  not  think  that  my  perversions  and  re- 
mDdellings  wilj  seriously  misrepresent  Ford's  general 
at  titude.  If  they  do,  I  commend  a  study  of  Richmond's 
chapters  as  more  likely  to  display  the  inwardness  of 
these  theories  than  my  own  personal  reactions  to  what 
appeared,  most  hopefully  at  the  time,  as  a  new  doctrine; 
ev  3n  the  radical  openings  of  Froebel  and  Herbart  were 
quite  unknown  to  me  at  the  age  of  twenty-four. 

For  Ford  began,  at  first  tentatively,  and  afterwards 
wi:h  an  increased  precision,  to  put  before  me  the 
possibility  that  my  scattered  education  had  saved  me 
from  many  of  the  intellectual  vices  which  might  have 
arisen  from  the  discipline  of  a  single  dogmatic  method. 
He  suggested  that  all  my  various  new  starts  and  un- 
completed exercises  had  been  preparing  me  to  accept 
knowledge,  while  they  had  mercifully  left  me  without 
prejudice  in  favour  of  a  specialised  course.  He  made 
me  reaUse  that  the  structure  of  knowledge  is  ever  the 
same,  that  Euclid  is  a  preparation  for  the  study  of 
botany,  or  Greek  inflections  for  the  writing  of  English 
prose.  He  used  a  physical  analogy  to  illustrate  that 
thesis  under  my  hesitating  recognition,  and  gave  me 


22  W.  E.  FORD 

a  picture  of  a  finely  trained  muscular  system,  quick 
and  adaptable  ;  a  tool  competent  for  any  specialisation, 
if  specialisation  were  ultimately  the  goal  of  a  particular 
education. 

I  grasped  that  figure  with  the  objection  that  my 
mind  had  not  been  trained  in  all  its  parts,  that  there 
were  functions  which  had  been  wholly  neglected,  and 
he  met  me  with  the  quiet  reply  that  he  was  not 
maintaining  a  case  for  the  haphazard,  but  merely  for 
a  principle  more  nearly  approached  in  my  case  than  it 
would  have  been  if  I  had  stayed  seven  years  at  a 
typical  public  school  of  the  period. 

'  You  had  some  kind  of  chance,'  he  said — a  sentence 
that  stuck  in  my  memory.  It  came  to  me  as  a  revela- 
tion, just  then,  that  there  were  other  forms  of  clever- 
ness besides  the  ability  to  discuss  the  classics.  I  had 
always  admired  sound  scholarship ;  I  do  still ;  but  Ford 
confirmed  the  hope  that  scholarship  was  not  the 
beginning  and  end  of  wisdom.  Before  I  met  him  that 
hope  had  been  a  vague  thing  which  sometimes  took  the 
appropriate  form  of  an  anchor,  but  at  other  times  worfj 
the  semblance  of  a  snare,  the  pitiful  excuse  of  one  wh:) 
knew  all  too  surely  that  scholarship  could  never  b(j 
within  his  reach. 

My  '  chance,'  as  I  inferred  from  Ford's  furth(  r 
conversation,  lay  in  my  undestroyed  capacity  for 
synthesis.  I — he  took  me  merely  as  an  instance- - 
could  still  approach  knowledge  without  bias.  What 
I  had  learned  in  spite  of  my  training  had  provided  me 


A  PERSONAL  IMPRESSION  23 

u-ith  a  basis.  My  little  Latin  and  less  Greek  were 
er  ough  to  furnish  me  with  a  better  touchstone  than 
that  I  should  have  had  if  I  had  concentrated  on  them 
to  the  neglect  of  all  those  other  branches  of  knowledge. 

I  remember  that  he  turned  aside  to  dismiss  that 
metaphor.  *  You  have  avoided  one  danger,'  was  the 
gi.  t  of  his  speech,  '  the  danger  of  regarding  one  par- 
tic  ular  subject  as  the  root  and  trunk  of  all  learning. 
But  one  can't  think  of  knowledge  as  a  tree,'  he  went 
on  ;  *  it  would  be  a  very  queer  kind  of  tree,  wouldn't  it, 
with  a  different  sort  of  fruit  on  every  branch  ?  And 
all  of  them  springing,  according  to  the  classicists,  from 
thi  single  root  and  trunk  of  the  dead  languages.' 

I  forget,  now,  the  detail  of  his  enlargement,  and 
ev  m  whether  he  found  another  metaphor  to  take  the 
plcLce  of  the  one  he  had  discarded.  What  I  recall 
se(  ms,  in  the  light  of  subsequent  illuminations,  to  have 
bem  very  elementary  stuff  indeed,  nothing  more  than 
a  disposal,  before  my  receptive  but  untrained  eyes, 
of  principles  that  even  the  modem  academic  admits 
wi^h  a  petulant  reluctance.  Nevertheless,  they  were 
principles  that  at  once  roused  my  ignorant  enthusiasm, 
and  I  received  them  as  new-found  truths  that  would 
pre  sently  revolutionise  the  whole  system  of  education. 
It  was  a  revelation  to  me  that  school  subjects  should 
nor.  be  studied  in  sealed  compartments ;  that  *  history' 
and  'geography'  might  go  hand  in  hand,  and  that 
thty  were  the  basis  of  economics,  or  that  the  story  of 
Caesar's  campaigns  might  be  made  a  vital  link  of 


24  W.  E.  FORD 

connection  between  Mediterranean  history  and  the 
history  of  continental  Europe.  (It  is,  indeed,  a 
shameful  fact  that  I  could  not  then  have  indicated 
France,  Belgium,  Switzerland  or  Germany  in  any 
organic  relation  to  the  GaUic  wars.  I  wonder  if  your 
average  Eton  boy  is  much  better  informed  at  the 
present  day  ?) 

All  the  substance  of  that  night's  conversation  has 
gone  back,  now,  into  the  dull  store  of  accepted  things. 
It  may  be  that  I  have  not  Ford's  gift  for  keeping  bright 
the  structure  of  behef.  He  approached  me  on  our 
first  meeting  with  the  keenness  of  the  recent  dis- 
coverer ;  yet  even  then,  his  material  must  have  been 
far  from  new  to  him.  I,  in  his  place,  should  have 
been  wearied  with  the  necessity  for  stating  axioms, 
aimoyed  by  the  foolish  unreadiness  of  my  listener. 
But  that  was  a  gift  of  his.  His  problem  never  lost 
freshness  ;  he  found  new  interest  in  the  reflections  of 
each  new  listener.  For  him  each  pupil  was  a  fresh 
disclosure  of  the  eternal  miracle. 

We  were  coming  within  sight  of  that  aspect  of  him 
when  Mrs.  Aubert  finally  drove  us  up  to  bed.  He  had 
been  talking  of  the  preparation  of  a  mind  to  accept 
instruction,  and  then  he  looked  at  me  with  a  faintly 
whimsical  smile  as  if  for  the  first  time  he  touched  upon 
some  subject  just  precious  enough  to  make  him  a  little 
self-conscious.  *  You  only  have  to  help  a  boy  to  dig 
the  stuff  up,'  he  said,  '  help  him  to  remember,  you 
know.*    And  his  inflection  of  the  word  remember  told 


A  PERSONAL  IMPRESSION  25 

me  that  he  used  it  in  a  sense  I  was  able  to  recognise. 
I  had  read  Plato's  Dialogues  in  an  English  translation, 
and  the  *  Meno  '  had  left  a  distinct  impression  on  my 
mind.  My  use  of  that  little  piece  of  erudition,  however, 
cldlled  our  closing  relations.  Perhaps  I  had  a  sense 
of  recovered  standing,  or  I  may  have  realised  that  I 
h^,d  offered  no  positive  contribution  to  the  conversa- 
tion for  a  long  time.  But  I  need  not  dwell  on  my 
interruption,  and  I  have  long  since  abandoned  my 
argument  against  Socrates'  theory  of  latent  knowledge. 
F(«rd  did  not  take  up  my  weak  little  challenge  of 
materiahsm.  No  one  knew  better  than  he  did,  how 
gr  iat  a  waste  of  time  it  is  to  argue  with  an  obstinate 
or  momentarily  elated  opponent.  No  *  remembering ' 
comes  that  way. 

We  should  certainly  have  recovered  our  under- 
stcuding,  if  it  had  not  been  for  Mrs.  Aubert,  but  after 
a  :asual  interruption  at  half-past  ten  to  remind  us 
that  this  was  their  closing  time,  she  came  in  again  a 
fev/  minutes  before  eleven  and  asked  us  frankly  if  we 
were  not  going  to  bed.  I  was  inclined  to  resent  her 
int  jrference,  but  Ford  quietly  submitted. 

1  carried  to  bed  with  me  a  disturbing  doubt  as  to 
whither  he  had  not  been  reUeved  by  our  landlady's 
int«  irruption.  My  eternal  self-depreciation  suggested 
that  despite  his  appearance  of  interest  he  had,  in  fact, 
been  bored  by  my  company.  I  saw  myself,  painfully, 
as  the  young  ass  who  had  begun  by  attempting  a 
ridi:ulous  boast  of  knowledge. 


26  W.  E.  FORD 

That  doubt,  however,  did  not  dominate  me.  If  I 
remembered  my  attempted  effect  of  scholarship  with 
uneasiness,  I  was  still  warm  with  an  appreciation  of 
Ford's  contribution  to  the  conversation,  and  glad 
to  remember  that  I  had  achieved  an  ultimate  honesty. 
And  I  gave  Ford  place,  that  night,  on  my  list  of 
heroes  ;  that  Hst  of  mine  which  never  records  more 
than  one  name  at  a  time.  There  have  been  so  many 
whom  I  have  known  and  revered  for  months  or,  in 
some  cases,  for  years.  They  begin,  as  Ford  began, 
by  appearing  so  astonishingly  greater  than  myself. 
And  they  maintain  their  place,  until  I  come  to  criticism, 
imtil  by  some  slow  reaction  of  thought  or  attitude  I 
find  the  comparison  between  their  abilities  and  my 
own  does  not  invariably  yield  so  great  a  balance  in 
their  favour.  But  I  dare  not  examine  that  complex 
characteristic  of  mine,  it  demands  a  greater  considera- 
tion than  I  can  give  it  in  this  place.  I  mention  it  only 
because  it  is  a  necessary  test  of  my  earlier  relations 
with  Ford. 

In  this  case  the  beginnings  of  hero-worship  are 
reasonably  obvious,  if  we  assume  in  the  postulant  the 
temperament  that  inclines  him  to  accept  new  doctrines. 
And  although,  as  a  matter  of  mere  chronology.  Ford 
was  my  senior  by  no  more  than  three  years,  he  was 
curiously  older  than  I  was.  He  certainly  looked  more 
than  twenty-seven  when  I  first  met  him.  He  was 
wearing  a  beard  at  that  time,  and  that  gave  him,  in 
my  eyes,  the  dignity  and  prestige  of  a  full-grown  man — 


A  PERSONAL  IMPRESSION  27 

a  prestige  of  which  I  have  never  become  aware  in 
myself.  (At  forty  -  four  I  am  invariably  surprised 
\vhen  some  youngster  of  twenty-five  or  so  evidences 
any  sign  of  respect  for  my  years.)  But  mere  appearance 
( ounts  for  very  little,  and  I  recognised  very  soon  the 
many  points  of  Ford's  superiority  to  myself.  He  had 
travelled,  he  had  read,  he  knew  something  about  life. 
Up  to  the  time  of  his  death,  I  was  never  quite  his 
contemporary. 

And  so,  since  I  had  a  vacancy  just  then,  I  instated 
Ford  as  hero  ;  and  if  I  am  to  be  honest  in  giving  my 
impressions  of  him,  I  must  admit  that  in  those  earlier 
\'ears  he  seemed  to  me  to  tower. 


CHAPTER  III 

I  SEEM  to  have  put  a  halo  round  that  first  meeting  with' 
Ford ;  and  now  that  I  come  to  reflect  on  the  later 
relations  between  us,  I  am  a  Uttle  handicapped  by  a 
very  natural  desire  to  retain  that  glory,  at  least  in  the 
form  of  a  permanent  nimbus  for  my  hero.  I  perfectly 
understand  at  this  moment  why  the  biographer  should 
so  often  appear  as  a  lopsided  optimist.  The  desire  I 
mentioned  urges  me  to  glorify  my  subject  because  it 
affords  me  the  opportunity  of  making  something ; 
and  that  particular  form  of  creation  is  easier  by  far 
than  understanding.  If  I  were  writing  this  book  alone, 
— a  task  for  which  I  have  no  qualifications — I  should 
certainly  romanticise  Ford,  and  end  by  presenting 
a  consistent,  and  possibly  an  admirable  portrait  of  an 
imaginary  creature  who  bore  a  generic  resemblance  to 
the  original,  but  would  hardly  be  recognised  by  his 
friends.  As  it  is,  I  am  only  contributing  a  few  chapters 
to  Mr.  Richmond's  work,  and  he  will,  I  know,  be  ruth- 
less in  his  criticism.  I  submit  that  my  task  is  a  hard 
one  for  the  mere  novelist ;  and  claim  a  special  measure 
of  toleration  on  that  account.  Lastly — to  end  an 
apology  that  has  been  wrung  from  me  by  an  hour  of 
unprofitable    contemplation,    spent    in    staring    with 


A  PERSONAL  IMPRESSION  29 

growing  despondency  at  a  sheet  of  paper  bearing  the 
repulsive  heading  '  Chapter  III.'  and  nothing  more — 
I  must  insist  on  one,  as  it  seems  to  me,  almost  in- 
superable difficulty.  In  a  novel  the  characters  are 
invariably  simplified.  The  most  complex  character 
in  fiction  is  more  reasonable  and  consistent  than  the 
average  member  of  one's  daily  acquaintance.  And  in 
planning  and  working  out  a  novel,  one  can  satisfactorily 
invent  reasons  and  explanations.  In  a  biography  one 
is  permitted  to  suppress  but  not  to  invent. 

The  stumbling-block  that  led  to  my  hour's  waste  of 
time  and  this  subsequent  apology,  is  my  complete 
inability  to  account,  in  any  way  convincingly,  for  the 
feet  that  after  our  Jubilee  night  at  Halliford,  I  did  not 
meet  Ford  again  for  three  years  ;  and  met  him  then 
by  the  merest  accident.  I  knew  that  it  must  seem,  to 
p  it  it  mildly,  highly  improbable  that  I  should  not  have 
written  to  him.  I  had,  indeed,  promised  to  write  and 
fr:  an  appointment  with  him  in  the  City,  and  I  wore 
the  envelope  on  which  his  address  was  scribbled,  until 
the  pencilled  writing  was  an  almost  undecipherable 
blur.  There  is  only  one  explanation  possible — I  was 
like  that  in  those  days.  I  had  conceived  an  enthusiasm 
for  Ford ;  and  every  time  that,  in  my  enforced  evacua- 
tions of  rubbish,  I  came  across  that  particular  envelope 
(I  used  to  stuff  letters  in  my  pockets  until  the  lining 
w(  nt),  I  wrote  to  him  long,  rather  literary  letters — in 
my  mind.  None  of  them  was  ever  put  on  paper. 
That  was  one  of  my  particular  weaknesses.    I  have 


30  W.  E.  FORD 

criminally  shirked  the  payment  of  a  debt  I  honestly 
longed  to  settle,  because  I  could  not  summon  resolution 
to  do  the  thing  at  the  moment.  And,  in  the  same 
way,  I  have  deliberately  walked  past  the  door  of  a 
shop  to  which  I  had  come  in  order  to  buy  something 
I,  perhaps,  urgently  required.  At  the  last  moment, 
it  seemed  to  me  that  to-morrow  would  do  better  for 
my  purchase.  After  these  instances  it  will,  I  hope, 
be  just  comprehensible  that  I  put  off  my  letter  to  Ford 
indefinitely. 

But,  Destiny — for  no  particular  purpose  that  I  can 
trace — planned  with  a  delicate  accuracy  that  I  should 
meet  Ford  in  London  Wall  during  my  lunch  time, 
some  three  years  or  so  after  our  first  meeting — an 
accident  that  so  far  affected  my  life  to  a  just  appreci- 
able extent.  The  year  of  that  second  meeting  was,  I 
know,  1900,  because  we  discussed  the  Boer  War  a  few 
days  later  ;  and  the  peculiar  phase  of  that  struggle,  my 
certainty  that  it  was  summer,  and  that,  for  reasons 
which  will  appear  later,  it  could  not  have  been  the 
summer  of  1901,  afford  evidence  to  fix  the  date  fairly 
accurately. 

Ford  had  a  beautiful  lady  with  him  when  we  met  in 
London  Wall.  I  was  not  introduced,  but  she  con- 
siderably distracted  my  attention.  And  as  Richmond 
is  reasonably  certain  that  the  lady  must  have  been 
Miss  Worthington,  it  may  be  interesting  to  record  a 
brief  impression  of  my  one  ghmpse  of  her.  She  was 
tall,  taller  than  Ford,  and  fair ;  and  her  features  had 


A  PERSONAL  IMPRESSION  31 

the  wonderful  effect  of  being  chiselled  or  modelled  with 
the  careful  art  of  a  realist  sculptor — the  effect  which 
is  hardly  ever  found  in  the  pretty  women  of  the  lower 
ai:d  middle  classes  in  England.  I  certainly  took  her 
for  an  aristocrat,  and  worshipped  her  image  for  a  time. 
She  took  not  the  least  notice  of  me,  I  remember ;  no 
dC'Ubt  she  resented  my  interruption  of  her  conversation 
with  Ford. 

I  should  probably  not  have  recognised  him  if  he  had 
net  hailed  me  by  name.  He  had  shaved  his  beard  and 
moustache,  and  he  looked  younger  than  my  acquaint- 
ance of  three  years  before.  He  instantly  remembered 
me,  and,  moreover,  all  the  circumstances  of  our  first 
m(  eting.  *  You  promised  to  write,'  he  reminded  me. 
'  I  suppose  you  lost  my  address  ?  ' 

.\nd  that  remark  led  to  one  of  the  real  situations 
which  one  can  use  in  fiction,  inasmuch  as  my  char- 
acteristic inabihty  to  tell  the  easy  untruth  on  such 
occasions  was  quite  a  factor  in  my  further  intimacy 
wii  h  Ford.  My  stammering  reply  to  the  effect  that  I 
still  had  his  address  in  my  pocket,  that  I  had  meant 
and  wanted  to  write,  and  that  I  had  been,  as  usual, 
a  '  rotten  slacker,'  quickened  his  interest  in  me  to  the 
point  of  making  an  appointment  at  the  Cafe  Nero  in 
the  Wool  Exchange,  for  the  following  day.  I  chose 
the  rendezvous.  And  he  told  me  there  that  my  rather 
ela'iX)rate  honesty  and  self-condemnation  had  piqued 
his  curiosity. 

Nevertheless,  our  friendship  ripened  very  slowly. 


32  W.  E.  FORD 

I  met  him  three  or  four  times  in  the  next  nine  months, 
always  at  the  same  place  ;  and  I  was  intensely  inter- 
ested in  him,  but  I  regarded  him  as  a  rather  superio]* 
being,  and  felt  that  it  was  not  for  me  to  suggest  such 
further  intimacies  as,  say,  a  long  evening's  conversa- 
tion at  his  rooms  or  mine. 

Then  in  the  summer  of  1901,  I  entered  upon  what 
I  now  recognise  as  the  second  phase  of  my  life.  The 
development  of  the  phase  was  gradual,  but  the  change 
of  interests  and  associations  was  instant ;  and  drastic 
enough  in  certain  ways  to  throw  my  acquaintance  with 
Ford  momentarily  into  the  background.  I  did  not 
forget  him,  but  I  forgot  to  meet  him.  Also  my 
employer  moved  his  offices  from  Moorgate  Street  to 
Bedford  Square  in  the  spring  of  that  year,  and  my 
associations  with  Ford  were,  save  for  our  first  meeting, 
all  connected  with  the  great  underground  cafe  in  the 
Wool  Exchange  building. 

I  must,  however,  note  one  strange  anomaly  by  the 
way.  When  I  was  in  the  City,  as  I  have  said,  I  met 
Ford  by  chance  in  London  Wall,  although  I  rarely 
went  down  that  street  and  he  was  there  by  the  merest 
accident.  Now,  during  the  whole  of  1902  Ford  was 
living  within  half  a  mile  of  the  office  in  which  I  was 
working,  constantly  passed  it  and  spent  a  great  part 
of  his  time  in  the  British  Museum,  which  I,  in  my  turn., 
passed  at  least  twice  every  day  in  my  walk  from  m]y 
room  in  Montague  Street  to  my  office  in  Bedford 
Square.     And  yet,    during  those   twelve   months,    1 


A  PERSONAL  IMPRESSION  33 

ne\^er  once  caught  sight  of  him.     The  facts  of  life  are 
so  improbable. 

The  causes  that  led  to  our  next  meeting  were  not, 
strictly  speaking,  fortuitous.  I  had  remembered  his 
Bkomsbury  address  all  this  time,  although  I  had 
neither  written  to  him  nor  been  to  see  him.  My  lack 
of  ''uterprise  in  this  case,  however,  is  quite  exphcable. 
I  1  ad  an  exigeante  *  interest '  that  occupied  all  my 
spare  time. 

r>ut  I  have  come  to  a  period  of  my  own  life  that 
even  now,  after  a  lapse  of  more  than  eleven  years,  I 
recall  with  very  considerable  distaste.  I  do  not 
propose  to  enter  into  that  history  ;  but  I  may  explain 
than  I  left  my  job  as  an  architect's  assistant  at  the 
end  of  September  1903,  and  joined  the  New  York 
Life  Insurance  Company  as  an  agent ;  that  I  was 
married  for  the  first  time  in  November  of  the  same 
yea/  and  went  to  live  in  a  flat  in  Buckingham  Gate  ; 
and  that  early  in  1904,  in  a  desperate  search  for 
probable  *  cases,'  I  remembered  Ford  and  wrote  to  him 
on  che  off  chance  of  finding  in  him  a  willing  and 
insurable  risk.  The  address  found  him,  as  he  had 
retuned  then  to  his  old  rooms  in  Blooms  bury.  I 
supiose  I  mentioned  my  object  in  writing  to  him  ;  I 
am  5  ure  that  I  did  not  insure  him.  I  was  always  too 
bitterly  ashamed  of  my  occupation  to  press  even  the 
mosl  likely  *  case  '  among  my  acquaintances. 

I  Jiave  been  drawn  into  these  apparently  irrelevant 
details  of  autobiography  by  my  attempt  to  recover 

c 


34  W.  E.  FORD 

a  true  sense  of  my  early  relations  v^dth  Ford ;  the 
phase  that  lasted,  almost  unchanged,  until  the  winter 
of  1911-1912,  when  he  was  home  again  in  Golden 
Square  after  spending  six  months  in  India.  During 
all  this  period  we  met  infrequently.  There  were 
enormous  intervals  due  to  the  adventures  of  the 
various  life  which  beset  me  when  I,  finally,  broke  away 
from  the  shackles  of  my  office  routine.  But  whenever 
we  did  meet  my  attitude  towards  him  remained  that 
of  pupil  to  master — an  attitude  that  I  learned  later 
was  the  real  obstacle  between  us. 

In  those  days  I  failed  completely  to  understand 
him.  I  put  him  too  high,  and  never  once  realised  that 
my  reverence  irked  and  a  little  dismayed  him.  And 
so  I  have  found  it  impossible  to  explain  my  impressions 
of  that  time  without  first  laying  stress  on  my  own 
weakness.  For  it  was  not  Ford  whom  I  knew,  but 
my  own  thought  of  him  ;  and  my  thought  was  a  false 
one.  I  used  to  go  to  him  for  advice,  as  a  pious  spinster 
goes  to  her  parish  priest ;  and  like  the  spinster,  I  was 
always  attempting  to  win  admiration  by  a  confession 
of  weakness.  I  was  the  victim  of  that  commor 
romantic  ideal  which  seeks  to  create  the  illusion  o:: 
absolutes.  Conscious  of  my  own  inabilities,  I  triec. 
to  find  in  Ford  the  absolute  strength  and  wisdom,  iii 
order  that  I  might  shift  the  responsibility  of  my  hf<; 
to  his  ordinance.  I  went  to  him  for  advice,  and  if 
he  had  given  me  a  rule  I  should  have  obeyed  it. 

I  remember  very  vividly  the  last  instance  of  thos: 


A  PERSONAL  IMPRESSION  35 

visits  to  my  lay  confessional ;  a  visit  made  at  a  time 
when  things  were  going  very  badly  indeed  with  me. 
Ford  was  married  then  and  living  at  his  school  in 
Holland  Park.  I  think  I  must  have  written  to  him 
and  made  an  appointment.  I  know  that  after  a  few 
minutes  in  the  drawing-room  he  took  me  upstairs  to 
hU  own  study.  I  have  always  had  an  idea  that  Mrs. 
Fdrd  did  not  like  me.^  I  certainly  never  made  any 
of  my  confessions  in  her  presence,  and  assumed — with 
good  justification,  I  believe — that  they  were  never 
re]X)rted  to  her  by  Ford  himself. 

My  financial  and  marital  complications  were  rapidly 
becoming  disastrous,  and  I  put  them  before  Ford  in  the 
tentative,  half-despairing  manner  that  was  sympto- 
mjitic  of  my  condition  just  then  ;  finding  a  salve,  even 
while  I  complained,  in  his  quick,  sympathetic  interest. 
But  when  I  came  to  a  pause,  he  got  up  and  began  to 
pa':e  the  little  length  of  his  study.  He  had  decided 
to  make  an  end  of  these  old  relations  between  us,  not 
for  any  selfish  reason,  but  simply  because  he  believed 
thct  I  might  still  save  my  life  from  wreck.  And  his 
first  sentence  put  the  whole  situation  before  me  in  the 
fevest  possible  words. 

*  You  must  be  God,'  he  said.     *  /  can't.' 
liut  I  was  not  quick  enough  to  grasp  the  full  signifi- 
cance of  that,  and  the  explanation  that  followed  was,  in 
one  sense,  of  quite  peculiar  interest.     For  he  told  me, 
son  e  four  years  later,  that  during  the  elaboration  of 
*  Mrs.  Ford  denies  this. — K.  R. 


36  W.  E.  FORD 

that  simple,  intuitive  statement  of  his,  he  approached 
for  the  first  time  the  primitive  conception  of  that 
philosophy  which  I  hope,  however  imperfectly,  to 
indicate  in  a  further  chapter. 

No  doubt  my  memory  of  his  first  exposition  is 
confused  now  with  many  subsequent  conversations, 
but  I  remember  the  effect  that  his  talk  had  upon  me, 
and  it  seems  worth  while  to  attempt  some  reproduc- 
tion of  his  advice. 

He  began  b^^  censuring  my  inhibitions.  I  was  all 
for  sacrifice  at  that  time.  I  had  made  a  mistake  in  my 
first  marriage,  and  my  single  idea  was  not  so  much  to 
make  the  best  of  it  as  to  penalise  myself  for  having 
been  a  fool.  I  believed  that  I  was  being  a  little 
splendid  by  patiently  suffering  the  effects  of  my  folly. 

Ford  told  me  that  I  was  denying  God  ;  that  every 
time  I  suppressed  my  inclination  to  resent  the  lash,  I 
was  weakening  a  natural  impulse.  And  the  effect 
of  that,  he  said,  was  even  worse  for  my  wife  than  it 
was  for  myself ;  since  I  encouraged  her  natural  cruelty, 
when  by  resistance,  by  a  free  expression  of  my  impul- 
sive reactions,  I  might  stimulate  in  her  a  free  response 
to  other  complexes.  She  could  not  be  '  all-cruel,' 
he  said,  the  thing  was  unthinkable  ;  but  by  my  feeble 
submissions  I  was  developing  that  side  of  her  char- 
acter out  of  all  proportion. 

Then  he  went  on  to  urge  that  what  I  regarded  as  a 
fine  ideal  of  self-sacrifice  might  be,  in  effect,  nothing 
more  than  a  sop  for  my  moral  cowardice.    Would  it 


A  PERSONAL  IMPRESSION  37 

not  need  a  greater  effort  on  my  part,  he  asked,  to  go 
boldly  home  and  admit  to  my  wife  that  I  no  longer 
loved  her  ?  Would  it  not  need  more  courage,  more 
self-control,  to  speak  the  whole  truth,  than  it  would 
to  endure  my  present  misery  with  a  show  of  meekness  ? 
If  you  really  want  to  sacrifice  yourself,  choose  the 
hardest  way,  was  the  summary  of  his  argument. 

I  beHeve  that  talk  of  his  was  the  beginning  of  many 
things  for  him,  but  while  he  was  speaking  he  had  no 
thought  for  anything  but  me.  As  his  manner  was  on 
those  occasions,  he  constantly  looked  up  at  me  quickly, 
earnestly,  and  yet  with  an  air  that  was  a  trifle  abstracted, 
as  if  his  physical  approach  of  sight  was  no  more  than 
a  mechanical  aid  to  his  spiritual  approach.  He  used 
to  find  some  inner  contact  with  one  in  those  more 
earnest  moments  of  his.  He  reached  out  and  entered 
one's  mind.  And  he  read  me  so  clearly  and  effectively 
on  this  particular  occasion,  that  he  was  able  to  build 
a  philosophy  out  of  the  experience  gained  by  his 
uistant's  surrender  to  another  personality.  He 
n  ached  my  thought  and  then  stood  back  to  prescribe 
f(»r  me. 

At  the  last,  he  completed  his  effort  by  giving  me 
sc^mething  of  his  own  confidence.  He  told  me  that 
h<;  believed  I  should  '  come  through.'  The  phrase 
remained  with  me,  for  I  made  it  a  watchword ;  al- 
though with  a  quick  turn  that  was  a  trifle  whimsical, 
h('  went  on  at  once  :  *  If  it  is  ourselves  that  come 
through,  and  not  the  universal  behind  us  ?  '     I  cannot 


38  W.  E.  FORD 

pretend  to  remember  his  precise  words  but  the  intention 
is  that  which  he  conveyed  to  my  mind.  He  went 
on  to  question  how  far  this  complex  that  we  recognise 
as  our  personahty  may  be  merely  a  means  for  the 
expression  of  some  imiversal  that  continually  seeks  to 
be  deUvered. 

I  went  home  wonderfully  conscious  that  I  was  an 
agent  for  the  deliverance  of  eternal  truth  ;  and  if  the 
purpose  of  my  endeavour  failed  grievously  when  the 
exhilaration  of  new  knowledge  had  spent  itself  in 
conflict  with  the  insistent  realities  of  my  condition, 
I  had,  as  it  were,  opened  another  line  of  communi- 
cation with  God. 

To  that  extent  Ford  influenced  my  Ufe,  and  justified 
my  belief  in  the  Destiny  which  planned  our  first  two 
meetings  with  such  fastidious  unconcern.  But  after 
I  had  received  the  intended  stimulus.  Destiny  shrugged 
its  shoulders  and  left  me,  so  far  as  Ford  was  concerned, 
to  take  any  further  initiative  on  my  own  account. 

We  did  not  meet  again  for  four  years,  and  during 
the  interval  I  had  entered  upon  my  *  third  phase,'  the 
phase  that  still  endures. 

It  was  in  November  1911  that  I  got  a  letter  from 
Ford,  sent  on  by  my  publishers,  congratulating  me 
on  my  book,  The  Hampdenshire  Wonder.  I  have  kept 
that  letter,  and  it  now  lies  open  before  me,  but  I  cannot 
very  well  quote  it  in  full.  When  Ford  found  occasion 
for  praise,  his  enthusiasm  shone  out  with  no  shadow 
of  qualification.    Also,  there  was  an  element  of  pleased 


A  PERSONAL  IMPRESSION  39 

surprise  in  this  particular  expression  of  his — he  must 
have  been  more  than  a  Httle  astonished  at  the  evidence 
of  my  having  *  come  through  '  so  soon.  Neverthe- 
less, because  no  one  but  Ford  ever  saw  and  stated 
definitely  my  half -realised  purpose  in  writing  The 
Hampdenshire  Wonder,  I  will  copy  out  just  that  part 
of  his  eulogy  which  made  me  glad  to  have  made  the 
attempt. 

*  It  has  got  there  completely  so  far  as  I  am  con- 
c(  med,'  he  wrote.  '  In  detail  it  satisfies  innumerable 
instincts,  mathematical,  metaphysical,  psychological, 
and  so  on  .  .  .  and  in  general  it  does  what  very  few 
books  have  done — Stevenson's  Jekyll  and  Hyde  is  one 
— abstracts  one  of  the  fundamental  antinomies  of 
human  life,  drives  the  paradox  to  the  extreme  con- 
ceivable limit  without  loss  of  the  necessary  degree  of 
credibility,  and — leaves  the  moral  to  be  inferred.  The 
practical  result  is  material  for  fruitful  thought,  and  we 
can't  thank  a  man  for  any  better  gift.' 

A  little  further  down  he  completes  my  own  feeling  of 
purpose,  by  congratulating  me  on  '  a  certain  sense  of 
half  contact  with  the  illimitable,'  that  I  had  somehow 
m  inaged  to  achieve  in  the  book  he  was  praising. 

If  I  had  never  met  Ford  and  had  had  no  other  letter 
from  him  than  this  one,  I  should  have  known  that  he 
had  a  rare  gift  of  understanding.  It  may  be,  of 
coarse,  that  in  the  old  days  of  our  intercourse  he 
rciJised  something  in  me  of  which  I  myself  was  quite 
unaware,  and  so  saw  through  the  book  to  the  author. 


40  W.  E.  FORD 

But  if  that  be  the  explanation  it  still  credits  him  with 
a  most  unusual  power  of  insight,  inasmuch  as  no  one 
else  believed  in  me  during  that  *  second  phase.' 

We  met  several  times  that  winter  in  Golden  Square, 
and  twice  he  came  up  to  our  tiny  fiat  in  Willesden  Lane. 
We  had  suddenly  become  equals  and  could  talk.  For 
Ford,  himself,  could  talk  as  an  equal  with  any  man,  from 
the  most  brutal  uneducated  to  the  ripest  philosopher, 
and  it  was  only  such  as  I,  and  as  my  antithesis  the 
complacent  overbearing,  who  set  up  the  obstacle  of 
difference. 

It  will  be  evident  from  this  brief  account  of  my 
relations  with  Ford  how  little  I  knew  of  his  personal 
history.  All  that  far  more  interesting  matter  will  be 
set  out  by  Mr.  Richmond,  who  knew  the  man  and  his 
habits  of  thought  so  intimately.  But  what  I  have 
been  attempting  is  to  prelude  the  historical,  mobile 
account  of  Ford's  life  with  an  impression  that  would 
be  relatively  reflective  and  static.  When  I  began  my 
contribution  I  intended  to  describe  Ford  as  I  would 
describe  a  character  in  a  novel ;  I  thought  that  I  would 
try  to  make  a  picture  of  him  by  setting  down  his 
characteristic  tricks  of  phrase  and  gesture,  and  perhaps 
work  in  a  suggestive  anecdote  or  two.  When  I  .had 
actually  begun  my  task,  I  realised  that  this  was  not 
my  part  of  the  collaboration,  it  was  Richmond's. 
And  now  it  seems  to  me  that  I  have  written  much  of 
myself  and  very  little  of  Ford.  The  reflex  must  be 
found  in  a  consideration  of  opposites  ;   in  the  thought 


A  PERSONAL  IMPRESSION  41 

of  a  man  who  was  not  introspective  ;  and  was  not 
coacemed  with  the  effect  of  life  upon  himself,  but  with 
his  hope  to  affect  life. 

All  writers  of  fiction  are  to  some  extent  charlatans, 
and  most  of  them  are  aware  of  the  fact.  Introspection 
in(  \dtably  leads  to  self-consciousness  and  hypocrisy. 
Tl  e  antithesis  is  found  in  the  man  who  does  not 
ex  imine  his  own  motives  ;  and  Ford  came  nearer  to 
tho  ideal  in  this  kind  than  any  one  I  have  ever  met. 
I  cold  him,  once — only  a  few  weeks  before  he  left 
Er gland  on  his  fateful  journey  to  Japan — that  he 
completely  begged  the  question  of  his  own  character ; 
thi.t  he  was  an  a  priorist  in  living.  He  thought  that 
ov<  ;r  for  a  couple  of  seconds  before  he  replied,  and  then 
said,  *  Yes,  I  dare  say  that 's  true.  I  certainly  know 
lesi  of  myself  than  I  do  of  many  of  my  friends.  I 
don't  find  myself  interesting.'  And  for  that  reason, 
altiiough  he  found  the  whole  of  the  rest  of  life  quite 
absorbingly  interesting,  he  would  never  have  made  a 
no'/elist  or  a  writer  of  philosophy.  For  a  man  must  be 
on  the  friendliest  terms  with  himself  before  he  can 
make  the  abstract  which  is  necessary  to  both  these 
a v( -cations.  Ford  did  not  deal  in  crystallisations. 
He  had  no  inclination  for  that  integration  of  the 
vaiious  through  the  alembic  of  his  own  microcosm. 
He  kept  his  vision  of  life  fluid,  and  many  people  blamed 
him  as  lacking  in  consideration.  His  whole  tendency 
was  synthetic.  And  that  process  I  have  described,  with 
no    intention    of    preserving    an    accurate    chemical 


42  W.  E.  FORD 

analogy,   as  *  crystallisation,'  necessitates  separation, 
analysis. 

Indeed,  I  think  that  his  treatment  of  me  on  that 
last  occasion  of  our  unequal  contact  in  the  parts  of 
penitent  and  confessor,  is,  on  the  whole,  respectably 
typical  of  his  method  with  Hfe.  Another  man  in  his 
place  would  have  tested  my  case  on  his  own  character. 
He  would  have  asked  himself,  '  What  should  I  do  in 
such  circumstances  ?  '  Ford's  only  criterion  was 
what  he  knew  of  my  disposition  and  abilities.  He 
tried  to  project  himself  into  my  mind,  and  I  feel 
that  he  almost  wonderfully  succeeded. 

One  result  of  that  characteristic  of  his  was  that  a 
majority  of  his  casual  acquaintances  regarded  Ford  as 
rather  an  egotist.  He  was,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  a  self- 
less rather  than  an  unselfish  man.  He  was  so  unself- 
conscious,  both  in  giving  and  taking,  that  I  cannot 
imagine  him  deUberately  sacrificing  himself  to  give 
pleasure.  The  mere  act  of  deliberation  would  imply 
in  that  case  the  choice  and  acceptance  of  a  part,  and 
he  never  postured.  It  was,  so  to  speak,  almost  an 
accident  that  he  gave  pleasure  rather  than  pain  to  his 
friends  ;  it  happened  that  his  essential  attitude  was 
one  of  interest  rather  than  one  of  criticism. 

And  my  last  excuse  for  the  manner  of  this  chapter 
may  rest  on  the  fact  that  I  have  tried  to  show  what 
kind  of  man — as  a  single  instance  among  many  kinds — 
could  engage  and  hold  his  interest.  I  feel  an  urgent 
desire  to  praise  him  for  not  wearying  of  me.     I  believe 


A  PERSONAL  IMPRESSION  43 

thc-t  his  comprehension  of  me  is  a  splendid  testimonial 
for  his  abilities  as  an  educationist  and  a  sociologist. 

For  the  rest,  I  have  spoken  of  his  other  claims  to  a 
wide  attention  both  in  my  first  chapter  and  in  the 
collocation  of  various  notes  I  made  on  the  broader 
scheme  of  philosophy  he  was  just  beginning  to  outline 
when  he  died.  In  the  latter,  more  especially,  will  be 
found  much  that  is  a  clue  to  his  general  character. 
I  l(iave  it  to  Mr.  Richmond  to  give  a  completer  study 
of  Ford's  life,  and  hope  that  that  study  will  not  con- 
tradict my  statement  in  any  important  particular. 
Nevertheless,  if  another  reading  should  show  him  in 
other,  and  apparently  almost  irreconcilable,  aspects, 
the  fact  will  only  serve  to  prove  that  my  estimate 
is  a  true  one.  Ford's  *  selflessness '  will  bear  many 
translations. 


1 


PART   II 

A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY 
By  Kenneth  Richmond 


CHAPTER  IV 

Th]-:  biographer  of  a  famous  or  a  notorious  character 
has  to  deal  with  an  advantage  and  a  disadvantage 
con.bined.  The  advantage  is  that  he  starts  in  rapport 
witli  the  reader  over  a  certain  popular  conception  of  his 
subject ;  the  disadvantage  is  that  this  is  always  more 
or  l3ss  of  a  misconception,  since  the  public  man  who 
does  not  wear  a  mask  of  set  intention  is  always  fitted 
witli  a  mask  by  the  public.  And  it  is  a  risky  under- 
taking, as  Beresford  has  hinted,  to  lift  the  mask. 
As  I  set  myself  to  write  down  the  main  details  of 
Ford's  Ufe,  I  am  glad  that  there  is  no  popular  picture 
of  him,  no  accepted  set  of  fiat,  easy  generalisations 
about  his  character  cind  his  point  of  view,  such  as  a 
biographer  is  usually  obliged  partly  to  qualify,  partly 
to  dramatise.  But  I  am  more  than  glad  to  have  Beres- 
ford s  picture  instead — not  the  composite  photograph 
of  a  public  impression,  muddled  and  fluffy  at  the 
edge^  as  composite  photographs  are,  but  a  single 
impression  of  Ford  a^  he  appeared  to  a  single  friend. 
Not  too  much  of  a  friend,  either ;  Beresford  can  look 
at  Ford  from  a  sufficient  distance  to  see  round  him.  I 
cann  Dt ;  Ford  is  part  of  me  and  will  remain  so,  and 
I  can  bring  myself  to  use  my  closer  acquaintance  with 

47 


I 


48  W.  E.  FORD 


him  only  to  set  down,  very  objectively,  the  facts  of 
his  unpretentious  career. 

The  young  man  of  twenty-seven  whom  Beresford 
encountered  on  that  Diamond  Jubilee  evening  at 
Shepperton  owed  something  of  the  distinctive  quahty 
with  which  he  always  impressed  an  acquaintance,  to  an 
upbringing  that  by  force  of  circumstances  had  been  in 
many  ways  unusual,  and  could  not  have  failed  to  give 
him  an  outlook  and  a  mould  of  thought  different  from 
those  of  the  average  young  Englishman.  He  owed 
still  more  to  the  character  and  influence  of  his  father. 
Paul  Ford  was  by  choice  and  temperament  a  scientist ; 
by  profession  he  was  a  consulting  engineer  who 
specialised  in  mining  work.  This  calling  took  him 
much  abroad,  and  his  young  wife  chose  to  accompany 
him  upon  his  longer  travels.  To  judge  by  Ford's 
account  of  his  father's  description  of  her,  and  by  a 
photograph  that  he  has  shown  me,  his  mother  was  a 
woman  of  great  beauty,  little  physique,  and  high 
spirit.  She  had  broken  off  an  engagement  de  con- 
venance  at  the  eleventh  hour  to  elope  with  Paul  Ford, 
and  had  at  once  gone  with  him  to  South  America, 
where  he  had  many  months'  work  to  do.  By  the  tim(^ 
they  were  ready  to  return  to  England  the  birth  of  thei 
child  was  imminent,  and  was  eagerly  looked  forward 
to  as  the  crowning  of  their  romance  ;  they  decided  to 
await  the  event  at  Valparaiso.  Here  William  Ford 
was  bom  at  the  cost  of  his  mother's  life. 

Paul  Ford  had  at  first  to  overcome  a  resentful  hatrC'  3 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  49 

for  his  baby,  but  he  came  later  to  focus  upon  the 
growing  child  all  his  affections  and  ambitions.  He 
had  been  greatly  interested,  even  before  the  prospect 
of  fatherhood  had  given  the  matter  personal  signifi- 
cance, in  the  methods  of  paternal  training  by  which 
Kfrl  Witte  in  Germany,  and  John  Stuart  Mill  and 
Lord  Kelvin  in  Britain,  had  become  not  youthful 
prcdigies  so  much  as  youths  with  an  exceptionally 
fin-^  start  in  the  handicap  of  life  ;  and  he  and  his  wife 
had  taken  especial  pains,  during  the  months  preceding 
William's  birth,  to  discover  the  secret  enshrouded  in 
the  elder  Witte's  imsatis factory  writings. ^  It  may  be 
that  this  consistent  thinking  about  education  exercised 
a  p-e-'natal  influence  upon  William  Ford,  and  accounts 
in  some  degree  for  the  innate  faculty  for  teaching 
whi  :h  he  was  to  possess  ;  but  much  also  was  due  to  his 
recollection  of  his  father's  methods  in  teaching  him. 
The  child  accompanied  Paul  Ford  upon  most  of  his 
tra\els,  and  his  young  perceptions  were  exercised 
over  a  very  exceptional  range  of  childish  experience — 
far  too  wide  a  range  for  the  budding  intelligence,  if  his 
fath  ?r  had  not  continually  enticed  him  to  track  down 
simjle  generalisations  through  all  the  diversity  of 
detail. 

I  often  wish  I  could  have  known  Ford  as  a  child. 
I  have  seen  letters  that  his  father  wrote  to  him  at 

*  V  itte's  book  is  prolix  and  desultory;  a  recent  edition  in 
Engli:  h  has  been  cleverly  edited  and  compressed  by  Mr.  Addington 
Bruce      (The  Education  of  Karl  Witte :  Harrap,  191 5.) 


50  W.  E.  FORD 


school,  answering  some  childish  question,  or,  more 
often,  pointing  the  way  to  the  boy's  own  discovery 
of  the  answer  ;  and  they  give  a  reflected  picture  of  the 
young  Ford  as  the  most  naively  engaging  of  young 
philosophers.  Paul  Ford  had  felt  bound  to  try  the 
reluctant  experiment  of  sending  him  to  school.  The 
first  attempt  failed  promptly.  A  preparatory  school 
of  some  repute  proved  to  be  infected  with  perversion, 
and  the  boy  ran  away  in  disgusted  alarm,  taking 
refuge  (his  father  was  abroad)  with  a  soldier  uncle. 
This  worthy  was  merely  scandalised  at  the  indiscipline 
of  such  a  flight,  and  received  Paul  Ford's  cabled  inter- 
diction of  his  son's  return  to  the  school  with  the 
gloomiest  misgivings.  Ford's  chief  reminiscence  ci 
the  weeks  that  ensued  before  his  father's  return 
concerns  the  horror  of  his  uncle  on  discovering  his 
ignorance  of  the  Shorter  Catechism — a  horror  intensified 
by  his  frank  criticism  of  this  compilation  when  it  was 
brought  to  his  notice.  Paul  Ford  was  later  accused 
by  his  brother  of  *  turning  a  nice  kid  into  a  damned 
young  prig';  the  nice  kid  had  this  arraignment 
verbatim  from  his  father  as  a  warning  to  be  more  con- 
siderate in  his  conversations  with  mihtary  uncles  ar  d 
their  like. 

The  opinion  should  be  adjoined,  for  fair  contrast, 
of  the  retired  bishop  ^  who  prepared  Ford  for  co  l- 
firmation  a  year  or  so  later.  (Paul  Ford  always  obeyc  ;d 
to  the  letter,  so  far  as  he  could  conceive  them,  tje 

^  Dr.  Ogilvie. 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  51 

vie^hes  of  his  dead  wife.)  The  ex-bishop,  himself  a 
bit  of  a  naturalist  in  the  roomy,  discursive  manner 
often  affected  by  the  Victorian  cleric,  was  greatly 
pleased  by  the  boy's  readiness  to  connect  spiritual 
teaching  with  natural  fact,  and  was  so  delighted  over 
a  childish  analogy  between  prayer  and  electrical 
induction,  that  he  might  almost  be  said  to  have 
passed  his  candidate  upon  the  strength  of  that  alone. 

IJefore  this  event  another  school  had  been  given 
a  three  terms'  trial.  Here  Ford  was  untroubled, 
not  unhappy,  but — bored.  His  mind,  by  now  so 
thoroughly  awake,  found  little  to  work  upon ;  he  lost 
wa}-,  intellectually,  and  also  came  back  to  his  father 
with  so  many  barriers  of  conventional  schoolboy 
reticence  to  be  patiently  removed  before  their  rare 
corrradeship  could  be  reinstated,  that  Paul  Ford 
eventually  decided  that  schools  were,  in  his  case  at 
leas:,  a  mistake.  *  Mental  and  physical  tanneries  ' 
he  called  them — for,  besides  obfuscation  of  mind,  his 
boy  had  had  to  endure  the  usual  irrelevant  flagellations. 
The  majority  of  schoolmasters  have  learnt  better  since 
thos  3  days  in  the  matter  of  bodily  if  not  of  intellectual 
mishandling. 

It  would  not  be  true  to  say  that  Ford  grew  up  to 
youiig  manhood  simply  and  singly  the  product  of  his 
fath<;r's  training.  Paul  Ford  seems  to  have  been  by 
instinct  a  believer  in  self-developed  volition  rather 
than  imposed  habit  as  the  basis  of  character,  and 
the  stages  of  the  boy's  adolescence  were  marked  by 


52  W.  E.  FORD 

steps  of  progressive  liberation  from  leading-strings. 
He  became  more  and  more  self-educating.  There  was 
a  time  when  he  became  conscious  that  interesting  and 
lucrative  work  was  being  refused  because  the  sur- 
roundings— a  mining  camp  in  Arizona — would  not 
have  been  edifying  for  a  growing  boy  ;  he  felt  himself 
a  clog,  and  made  some  self-accusing  remark  to  that 
effect.  *  It 's  all  right,  old  man,'  said  his  father, 
*  you  're  gradually  taking  yourself  off  my  hands.* 
In  a  sense,  too,  the  boy's  increasing  emancipation  of 
mind  appears  to  have  been  due  to  the  father's  growing 
uncertainty  in  prescribing  for  him.  With  an  engineer's 
precision  of  mind  Paul  Ford  hated  to  act  without  a 
clear  plan,  and  he  refused  to  impose  his  will  or  his 
views  arbitrarily  unless  he  could  back  them  up  by  a 
clean-cut,  rational  explanation. 

For  much  the  same  reason  Ford's  acquisition  of 
book-learning  at  this  time  was  oddly  casual,  almost 
incidental.  The  actual  teaching  that  he  had  from  his 
father  was  erratic,  irregular  and  discursive,  though  ver}' 
much  alive.  Its  unquestionable  success  in  making 
him  not  only  an  eager  but  a  patient  and  a  thorough 
student  of  any  subject  that  he  took  up  is  hard  t<; 
explain.  Perhaps  the  example  of  Paul  Ford's  masterly 
thoroughness  over  his  own  work  had  its  influence. 
But  it  seems  also  that  while  he  always  left  the  boy  to 
do  his  own  spadework  on  his  own  responsibihty,  he  too!t 
every  care  to  see  him  provided  first  with  an  efficient 
spade.    Knowing  himself  to  be  very  rusty  in  GreeL, 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  53 

he  engaged  a  tutor  to  give  William  a  thorough  ground- 
ing— and  then,  dissatisfied  with  the  result,  himself 
made  a  rapid  study  of  Greek  grammar,  applied  to  it 
a  scientific  classification  of  his  own  devising,  and 
de^'oted  the  period  of  a  sea- voyage  to  the  intensive 
culture  of  his  son's  acquaintance  with  language- 
stricture  in  general,  as  compared  with  Greek  in 
particular.  A  year  later,  at  the  age  of  seven- 
teen. Ford  could  read  a  Greek  play  with  ease  and 
appreciation.^ 

I  can  recall  no  other  very  definite  detail  from  Ford's 
des  :ription  of  his  father's  teaching.  The  whole  process 
wa,^  not  so  much  a  formulated  system,  with  distinct 
poiiits  of  method  that  could  be  classified  under  so  many 
heads,  as  the  natural,  organic  outcome  of  a  unique 
pen  onal  relationship.  The  open,  easy  comradeship  of 
the  two  was  the  basic  fact,  and  with  this  assured  they 
cou :d  afford  to  take  an  empiric  line  in  matters  of  detail. 
Of  Paul  Ford's  more  general  influence  upon  the  char- 
act€  r  and  the  later  tendencies  of  his  son,  there  are  two 
quite  definite  things  to  be  said  which,  I  think,  partly 
explain  two  of  Ford's  fundamental  characteristics  as 
a  man. 

One  of  these  was  his  curious  view  of  personal 
ambition.    His  father  was  intensely  ambitious  for  him. 


*  1  his  is  an  isolated  case,  but  it  goes  to  support  the  contention 
of  so  ne  educators  that  the  boy  who  begins  Greek  at  twelve  gets 
no  further  in  five  years  than  the  point  that  can  be  reached  in  a 
year  )y  the  boy  who  begins  at  sixteen. 


■ 


54  W.  E.  FORD 


and  they  talked  much  of  possible  careers.  But  with 
his  scientific  sincerity  and  his  considerable  knowledge 
of  the  world's  ways,  Paul  Ford  could  not  but  emphasise 
the  large  if  varying  degrees  of  humbug  that  are 
necessary  for  most  kinds  of  professional  success  ;  and 
he  would  dwell,  as  a  coroUary,  upon  the  mental  cloud- 
ing, muddling,  and  sophistication  that  he  declared 
to  be  necessary  (and  to  be  duly  effected  in  schools) 
to  prevent  this  general  atmosphere  of  humbug  from 
disquieting  the  intellectual  and  moral  conscience. 
'  You  need  a  thoroughly  muddled  conscience  to  be 
an  honest  business  man,  nowadays,'  he  would  say  as 
he  looked  through  some  engineering  contract  upon 
which  his  advice  had  been  asked.  Clear  vision,  he 
maintained,  combined  with  even  a  moderate  sense  of 
social  responsibihty,  definitely  disqualified  its  possessor 
for  success  under  the  competitive  system.  (Later, 
Ford  always  held  that  the  competitive  system  in 
Western  civilisation  has  outlived  its  usefulness.)  It 
WcLS  only  natural  that  the  boy  should  grow  up  with  a 
high  and  an  accumulating  potential  of  ambition,  but 
with  an  increasing  tendency  to  mistrust  the  usual 
outlets  ;  and  that  he  should  eventually  emerge  with 
a  philosophy  of  ambition  far  removed  from  thai 
which  is  conventionally  sanctioned — upheld  and  pro 
tected,  indeed — by  the  common  instinct  for  mutua. 
defence  among  self-seekers  in  a  self-seeking  world. 

The  second  of  Ford's  characteristics  that  I  trao; 
back  to  a  source  in  the  influence  of  his  father's  person  • 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  55 

ality  is  his  unusual  outlook  upon  the  phenomena  of 
trouble,  pain,  and  grief.  Paul  Ford's  sorrow  for  the 
wiie  whom  he  had  lost  never  grew  less.  He  hid  it 
with  courage  and  cheerfulness,  but  in  such  an  intimacy 
as  was  theirs,  his  son  could  not  but  be  conscious  of  a 
det  ply  imderlying  sense  of  tragedy.  William  Ford  as 
I  -mew  him  seemed  possessed  of  some  inexplicable 
solvent  for  grief,  his  own  or  that  of  others,  though  he 
never  explained — I  do  not  think  he  could  have 
ex])lained — what  its  nature  was. 

William  was  to  go  to  Cambridge.  His  father 
pu:posed  to  keep  him  till  he  was  twenty,  knowing  that 
it  was  easier  for  a  boy  to  take  his  own  line  in  under- 
grc  duate  life  if  he  were  a  little  older  than  most  '  men  ' 
of  his  year.  But  when  William  was  nineteen  Paul 
Ford,  then  in  Central  Russia  with  his  son,  was  struck 
down  by  plague  and  died  in  three  days.  The  boy  was 
stunned.  He  has  described  himself  as  feeling  no 
pa-'sion  of  sorrow,  either  at  the  time  or  during  the 
dreary  and  solitary  trans-continental  journey  home, 
bu^  rather  as  being  conscious  of  a  supreme  struggle 
goiag  on  within  himself  against  fatalism  and  hopeless- 
ness. Only  in  dreams,  he  has  told  me,  he  would 
break  down,  waking  to  find  his  pillow  wet  with  tears. 
On  :e  he  dreamed  that  he  was  his  father,  weeping  upon 
his  mother's  grave  ;  and  the  dream  for  some  obscure 
reason  brought  him  great  comfort. 

His  going  to  Cambridge  was  first  postponed  and 
fin:dly  prevented  by  financial  troubles.     The  trusted 


56  W.  E.  FORD 

family  solicitor  who  had  the  handling  of  Paul  Ford's 
estate,  being  himself  at  a  climax  of  long  accumulating 
difficulties,  risked  the  money  in  unsafe  securities,  lost 
the  greater  part  of  it,  and  barely  escaped  bankruptcy 
and  prosecution — partly  through  Ford's  eagerness  for 
a  compromise  that  would  give  the  man  (with  his 
accounts,  for  the  future,  under  supervision)  another 
chance.  Ford  was  left  with  the  prospect  of  forty 
pounds  a  year  on  his  majority,  and  the  hope  that  this 
amount  might  increase  with  the  gradual  straightening 
out  of  the  crooked  business. 

His  military  uncle,  retired  by  this  time  and  on  half 
pay,  was  in  no  position  to  play  Providence  ;  but  he 
bestirred  himself  to  obtain  for  Ford  the  offer  of  a 
clerkship  in  the  bank  where  he  had  for  long  kept  a 
modest  account,  and  further  proposed  that  his  nephew 
should  live  with  him.  This  plan  put  Ford  in  a  difficult 
position.  It  was  prompted  by  sentiment,  and  by  the 
sense  of  duty  of  his  only  surviving  relation,  rather  than 
by  spontaneous  inclination  ;  the  old  Major  tried  but 
failed  to  disguise  his  fears  that  the  disarrangement  of 
his  set  ways  would  amount  to  an  upheaval ;  and 
Ford  himself  was  sure  that  neither  he  nor  his  uncle  would 
be  happy.  On  the  other  hand,  the  sentimental  factor 
was  strong  in  a  boy  of  nineteen,  who  was  reluctant  to 
meet  a  generous  proposal  with  a  clumsy  refusal  that 
must  needs  give  pain  ;  he  felt  confident  of  his  ability 
to  adapt  himself,  although  against  the  grain,  to  his 
uncle's  indurated  outlook ;    and  he  was  feeling  very 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  57 

lonely,  and  in  a  mood  to  welcome  the  most  cross- 
grained  companionship,  the  least  vital  link  with  the 
lif  i  that  had  been  shattered  for  him,  rather  than  none 
at  all.  Also,  it  was  security  that  was  offered  to  him, 
a  bulwark  of  a  kind  against  adversity,  as  compared 
with  the  rather  desperate  adventure  of  trying  to 
esrabhsh  his  own  footing  at  a  moment  when  sickness  of 
hexrt  somewhat  obscured  the  venturous  spirit  natural 
to  his  temperament  and  to  his  time  of  life. 

I  have  often  admired  Ford,  the  grown  man  whom  I 
knew,  at  one  crisis  or  another  of  his  life,  but  I  am  not 
sure  that  my  admiration  does  not  go  out  most  heartily 
to  the  youth  whom  I  never  knew,  except  in  terms  of 
th(  man's  half-humorous,  self-quizzical  reminiscences 
in  the  course  of  an  evening's  talk — the  youth  who 
de(  ided  to  take  his  grief  with  him  out  into  the  world, 
and  to  prove  in  himself  alone  the  value  of  the  equip- 
ment with  which  his  dead  father  had  provided  him. 

He  was  of  course  staying  with  his  uncle  at  the  time, 
and  the  announcement  of  his  decision  led  to  an  in- 
tenninable  discussion  that  stood  for  him,  in  later  life, 
as  the  prototype  of  all  useless  argument.  If  there 
wa5  one  thing  that  he  always  hated  it  was  unreasoning 
obstinacy,  but  this  he  found  to  be  his  sole  anchor. 
His  uncle  asked  again  and  again  for  an  explanation 
of  liis  reasons,  and  each  time  ignored  every  point  of 
the  explanation  as  it  was  patiently  re-elaborated.  He 
stated  and  restated  his  own  view  without  rationale 
and  without  variation,  ever  and  again  coming  back  to 


58  W.  E.  FORD 

the  same  opening — *  But,  my  dear  boy,  what  reason 
can  you  have  .  .  .  ?  '  It  became  a  crude  contest  of 
wills,  and  Ford  won.  It  is  to  the  Major's  credit  that 
he  bore  no  malice ;  he  remained  upon  affectionate, 
if  never  upon  intimate,  terms  with  his  nephew  until  his 
death. 

Ford  became  an  assistant  master  in  a  private  school 
at  which  I  was  a  pupil — this  was  the  germinal  beginning 
of  my  acquaintance  with  him.  Having  no  degree,  nor 
even  public  school  credentials,  he  commanded  a  salary 
of  £4^  a  year.  Talking  to  me  of  this  time,  in  after 
years,  he  could  not  say  how  far  his  choice  of  a  profession 
was  the  result  of  an  instinct,  how  far  due  to  lack  of 
alternatives.  The  instinct  must  have  been  present, 
to  judge  by  the  remarkable  talent  for  teaching  that  he 
displayed  from  the  very  first.  He  has  told  me  that  as 
a  schoolboy  he  continually  found  himself  criticising 
and  taking  mental  notes  to  the  tune  of  '  When  I  'm  a 
man,  I  won't  teach  like  that,'  and  this  might  suggest 
the  notion  that  he  had  even  then  some  unconscious 
premonition  of  his  future  ;  but  since  to  be  a  man 
meant,  for  the  boy  Ford,  to  be  a  man  Hke  his  father, 
it  is  likely  that  his  boyish  mind  had  only  compared  his 
master's  teaching  unfavourably  with  his  father's, 
and  drew  the  natural  conclusion  as  to  which  type  of 
educating  grown-up  he  would  prefer  to  become. 

At  all  events  he  knew  well  enough  how  not  to  handle 
a  class,  and  avoided  all  the  usual  pitfalls ;  we  youngsters 
placed  him  at  once  as  a  man  who  knew  his  business. 


f 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  59 

apart  from  the  fact  that  a  lesson  with  him  was  as 
refreshing  as  a  spring  in  the  desert.  For  his  method, 
anil  especially  for  his  rare  grasp  of  the  art  of  subject- 
presentation  (an  art  of  whose  existence,  even,  a 
majority  of  schoolmasters  remain  unaware),  he  must 
ha\'e  been  largely  indebted  to  his  father  ;  he  has  told 
me  that  his  first  depression  at  our  stifling  incapacity 
for  the  simplest  process  of  thought,  and  at  the  fiat, 
stale  tedium  that  flavoured  the  school  as  a  whole, 
was  overcome  chiefly  by  a  fierce  pietas  that  made  him 
burn  to  prove,  if  only  to  himself,  the  rightness  and  the 
conimunicability  of  his  father's  conception  of  know- 
ledf^'e  as  a  privilege  and  a  joy.  His  instinct  was  not 
lon,^  in  showing  him  the  way  to  make  us  share  his 
vision.  When  I  cast  my  mind  back  to  the  experience 
of  being  taught  by  him,  in  those  early  days  when  his 
method  as  a  teacher  was  almost  wholly  a  matter  of 
instinct,  it  seems  to  me  little  wonder  that  later  experi- 
ence and  self-training  made  him  an  exceptional 
exponent  of  the  art  of  education. 

In  the  first  lesson  of  a  term's  course  he  usually  gave 
us  little  to  do  but  listen,  unless  one  or  other  of  us  let 
his  attention  wander,  when  Ford  would  recall  the 
truj  nt  with  a  beckoning  question.  Leaning  over  his 
desl:,  his  eyes  unveiled  and  looking,  it  seemed,  through 
the  wall  behind  us  into  some  clear  distance,  he  would 
maj)  out  the  Une  of  work  upon  which  we  were  going  to 
embark.  He  held  out  no  baits  :  '  You  '11  find  that 
pan  fairly  stiff,'  was  often  his  comment  after  outlining 


6o  W.  E.  FORD 

an  attractive  section  of  his  programme.  When  we, 
in  imagination,  were  already  engaged  upon  the  detailed 
struggles  that  he  had  promised  us,  he  would  begin  to 
open  up  vistas.  At  this  point,  our  subject  led  into 
regions  of  history,  at  that,  into  a  world  of  scientific 
miracles  ;  its  development  had  been  a  long,  exciting 
business  of  human  exploration  and  discovery  ;  gradu- 
ally a  sense  grew  upon  us  of  its  place  and  value  in  the 
sum  total  of  thought  and  knowledge. 

Then — we  felt  the  moment  coming — he  would  push 
himself  back  from  his  desk  and  begin  a  slow,  measured 
walk  between  the  window  and  the  blackboard.  There 
is  no  possibiUty  of  describing  from  one's  childish 
memory  what  it  was  that  he  said  as  he  walked.  He 
spoke  as  though  to  himself,  creating  no  deliberate 
glamour,  searching  for  simple  words  in  which  to  clothe 
his  conviction  that  some  trite  school  subject  had  its 
note  to  sound  in  the  music  of  the  spheres.  At  its 
simplest  it  was,  as  a  whole,  hopelessly  above  our 
heads  ;  as  method,  the  later  Ford  would  have  con- 
demned it  out  of  hand  ;  but  we  listened  for  all  we  were 
worth,  piecing  together  what  we  could.  It  seemed  for 
the  moment  the  most  desirable  thing  in  heaven  or 
earth  to  be  able,  some  day,  to  see  arithmetic  or  geo- 
graphy as  Ford  saw  it.  And  later  in  the  term,  when 
some  '  fairly  stiff  part '  of  the  work  stood  up,  stark  and 
inexorable,  to  be  tackled,  we  went  for  it  with  little 
beguiling  or  driving.  It  was  all  part  of  the  big  busi-. 
ness — Ford's  phrase,  to  us,  for  the  cosmic  scheme— 


I 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  6i 


and  if  we  stuck  or  shirked  at  times,  a  casual-seeming 
word  or  two  from  him  would  recall  the  wide  vision 
ar.d  the  childish  impulse  towards  its  reahsation. 

His  actual  treatment  and  illustration  of  details  were 
al  .vays  concrete  and  objective  ;  we  learned  from  him 
to  turn  the  closest  and  most  unremitting  scrutiny  upon 
fa  :ts  and  things  ;  but  in  the  last  analysis  it  was  always 
an  abstraction  with  which  he  made  us  fall  in  love. 
His  wide  knowledge  fascinated  us  ;  but  whenever  any 
of  us  had  come  hot-foot  upon  some  fresh  question,  our 
dirtinctive  desire  was  to  find  out  what  Ford  thought 
about  it,  rather  than  what  he  knew.  Theory  never 
cane  from  his  hands  in  heavy  lumps,  but  sprang 
straight  into  flight,  to  be  followed  eagerly  to  the  limit 
of  our  vision.  And  it  was  never  as  his  own  theory 
thitt  he  insisted  upon  it.  '  Here  's  an  idea ;  see  it 
fly  ! '  was  his  attitude.  Many  of  the  people  who 
have  been  disappointed  in  him  personally,  feeling  that 
he  never  gave  fully  of  his  personality,  but  always 
withdrew  elusively  from  human  contacts,  have  never 
seen  the  meaning  of  his  positive  passion  for  truth.  We 
yoimgsters  realised  it,  in  our  childish  way.  He 
propped  a  truth  upon  his  own  authority,  his  own 
reputation  with  us,  for  the  first  moment  only ;  the 
ne>.t  moment  he  had  left  it  hovering  before  its 
fiigit  in  the  air  before  us,  and  had  joined  us  as  a 
spe:tator. 

Terhaps  the  most  distinct  picture  that  he  leaves  in 
a  schoolboy's  memory  is  of  his  expression,  hcdf  anxious, 


62  W.  E.  FORD 

half  whimsical,  when  he  had  failed  to  get  an  idea  to 
soar  at  all  for  our  slow-moving  little  minds.  He  was 
like  an  elder  boy  trying  to  fly  for  us  a  kite  that  per- 
sisted in  diving  back  to  earth.  He  would  stand  baffled 
for  seconds,  then  he  would  be  at  us  again  with  one 
ingenious  device  after  another  to  make  the  thing  rise. 
'  Look  here ;  this  is  a  silly  instance  of  what  I  mean,' 
he  would  begin — and  proceed  to  tack  on  the  wildest 
illustration,  often  wild  to  the  verge  of  absurdity.  He 
seldom  failed  to  get  his  kite  up  by  one  expedient  or 
another. 

He  seemed  to  have  no  methods  of  discipline  ;  the 
need  did  not  arise.  There  was  no  time  to  rag  in  his 
form,  and  no  scope  for  idleness  or  stupidity.  The 
latter  failing  he  simply  declined  to  recognise.  If  you 
could  not  understand  a  thing  one  way,  he  would  put 
it  to  you  in  another.  He  seemed  to  have  come  to  a 
private  intellectual  understanding  with  each  of  us 
alike,  and  we  realised  dimly  that  every  point  had  its 
individual  aspect  for  each  one  of  us.  While  he  waj; 
engaged  in  penetrating  some  particular  density  oi 
Smith  minor's,  the  rest  of  us  were  engrossed  to  disco ve:: 
what  new  light  upon  the  subject  would  accrue  in  th(^ 
process.  If  he  was  keen  to  give  us  an  idea  of  the 
unity  of  all  theory,  he  also  made  us  conscious  of  th<; 
many-sidedness  of  all  fact.  Ideas  flocked  too  thickly 
in  his  class-room  for  crime  and  punishment  to  find 
breathing  space.  It  was  different  when  we  passed  on 
to  the  thin  droning  of  another  master ;    then  it  wa  5 


p 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  63 


paper  pellets  that  furtively  and  inevitably  thronged 
the  air,  and  impositions  were  rife. 

The  headmaster,  knowing  that  he  had  a  tyro  on  his 
hands,  would  come  in  at  times  and  listen  to  Ford's 
teaching  with  vague  disapproval.  On  one  occasion 
he  broke  in  upon  a  lesson  in  which  Ford  was  inciting 
us  in  a  common  effort,  to  express  a  simple  story  in 
French,  and  stood  the  class  out  in  a  row  to  demonstrate 
how  French  should  be  taught.  Ford  waited  in  polite 
boredom  for  the  infliction  to  cease.  '  What  is  the 
de  mite  article  ?  '  asked  the  headmaster.  None  of 
us  could  tell  him.  *  They  must  learn  the  simple 
elements  first,'  he  threw  over  his  shoulder  to  Ford,  and 
th(  n  to  us,  *  The  definite  article  is  le — la — les.  Repeat 
it.'  '  LER — LAR — LAY,'  we  chorussed.  '  Genitive,  du 
— de  la — des.  Repeat  that.'  '  doo — dlar — day.' 
'  Dative,  au — d  la — aux.  Repeat  that.'  *  o — alar — 
o.'  '  Now  repeat  all  three  cases  with  me.'  He  led 
the  chorus,  and  we  followed  him  :  *  ler — lar — lay  ; 
DO') — dlar — day;  o — alar — o.'  'Very  good;  now 
age  in.'  We  gave  the  encore.  'Now  by  yourselves.' 
We  obliged,  each  with  a  sufficient  approximation  to  the 
mm  mysterious  and  unexplained  sounds  to  pass 
muUer  in  the  crowd.  '  There  ! '  He  turned  to  Ford. 
'  N')w  they  know  that.'  The  incident  symbolised  much 
for  Ford.  Incidentally  the  memory  of  it  gave  him  a 
phrase  that  he  often  used  in  talking  to  me,  in  later 
years — *  doodarday  knowledge.' 

ICe  recalled  a  priceless  bit  of  criticism  by  this  head- 


1 


64  W.  E.  FORD 

master,  when  the  latter  was  lecturing  him  in  private 
upon  his  shortcomings.  '  You  must  teach  them 
facts — teach  them  facts.  Teaching  as  you  do  it,  is  only 
putting  ideas  into  the  boys'  heads.' 

Ford  remained  in  this  school  for  a  year,  and  then 
resigned  the  post,  feeling  that  he  had  reached  a  point 
from  which,  in  those  surroundings,  he  could  get  no 
further  forward.  It  was  characteristic  of  him  that  he 
sought  another  mastership  without  having  asked  for  a 
reference  from  his  late  chief,  although  that  gentleman's 
opinion  had  been  largely  modified  by  Ford's  popularity 
with  the  boys  and  the  impression,  consequent  and 
subsequent,  that  was  made  upon  the  parents.  Indeed, 
I  can  remember  his  speaking  quite  feelingly  to  my  own 
father  of  the  gap  left  by  Ford's  departure,  and  there  can 
have  been  no  fear  that  his  testimonial  would  have  been 
other  than  friendly.  Also,  almost  any  testimonial 
would  have  been  better,  commercially,  than  non(3. 
I  once  heard  Ford's  view  of  the  matter  by  accident, 
when  we  had  been  talking  about  old  times  at  tlie 
school.  *  What  sort  of  a  reference  did  Marshall  gi\'e 
you  ?  '  I  asked.  '  Never  asked  him  for  one,'  said 
Ford.  '  Why  not  ?  '  '  Well  .  .  .  you  see,  he  would 
have  given  me  a  better  one  than  I  could  possibly  ha  /e 
given  him.'  The  fine  shade  is  typical  of  a  numtur 
of  Ford's  actions  and  inactions.  I  sometimes  wondcir 
whether,  without  any  deUberate  intention,  he  did  rot 
at  times  inflict  a  subtle  Nemesis  upon  those  who  hid 
disappointed  him.     I  seem  to  recall  a  certain  wistf  il- 


tv 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  65 


nes5  in  old  Marshall's  tone  when  he  spoke  of  Ford 
aft3rwards.  .  .  .  Did  the  fact  that  his  testimonial 
had  not  been  asked  for  rankle  quietly  in  his  mind  ? 
I  an  almost  disposed  to  hope  so. 

The  lack  of  a  reference  did  not  deter  Ford  from 
ap])lying  for  a  senior  mastership  in  another  school,  or 
prevent  his  getting  it.  Apparently  his  new  head- 
master hked  his  letter  of  application,  interviewed  him 
and  approved  of  his  ideas  on  education,  and  asked  no 
further  question.  I  know  little  of  his  life  here  except 
that  he  was  happy,  very  much  more  free  to  teach  as 
he  chose,  and  considerably  better  off.  A  small  boy 
of  (deven  or  twelve  at  the  time,  I  wrote  him  one  or 
twc  round-hand  letters,  and  lost  his  answers,  of  which 
I  ca  n  only  recall  that  they  were  friendly,  whimsical,  and 
very  refreshing  to  read  in  an  ink-stained,  dusty- 
smc  Uing  classroom. 

T  he  habit  of  travel  which  Ford  had  acquired  from 
his  life  with  his  father  could  now  be  indulged  to  some 
extent  during  school  hohdays.  The  hohdays  during 
his  year  at  Marshall's  had  to  be  spent,  for  economic 
reasons,  with  his  military  uncle,  whom  Ford  regarded 
with  amused,  respectful  gratitude,  and  who  regarded 
Fon  I  with  affectionate  despair.  Ford  now  spent  little 
time  with  the  old  colonel,  to  their  mutual  relief,  but 
wen:  instead  on  inexpensive  trips  to  Bruges  and 
Normandy.  But  these  were  scarcely  satisfying  after 
his  Alder-ranging  experiences  with  his  father ;  also 
they  were  never,  in  practice,  inexpensive  enough,  and 

E 


66  W.  E.  FORD 

had  to  be  atoned  for  by  severe  pinching.  It  happened 
that  I  needed  coaching,  one  Easter  hoHdays  in  m}' 
fourteenth  year,  for  a  pubhc  school  scholarship,  and 
the  question  of  a  tutor  was  in  the  air.  I  pleaded  that 
Ford  might  be  approached,  and  successfully.  Ford,  to 
whom  the  invitation  happened  to  be  highly  opportune; 
financially  (a  Christmas  in  Heidelberg  had  reduced 
him  to  two  suits,  one  very  shiny),  replied  that  he  was 
quite  unqualified  for  the  task,  being  neither  a  public 
school  man  nor  a  practised  coach,  and  could  offer 
nothing  more  convincing  than  his  own  opinion  that  h(i 
could  teach  me  anything  that  was  needed.  I  remember 
the  anxiety  with  which  I  watched  the  letter,  in  Ford's 
small,  neatly  spaced  handwriting,  undergo  its  break- 
fast-table scrutiny.  To  my  joy  the  verdict  was 
favourable. 

Ford  came  ;  and  on  the  same  day  the  appearance  of 
a  minor  infectious  complaint  made  it  advisable  that  1 
should  go  away  from  home — to  be  quarantined  might 
mean  that  I  could  not  go  up  for  examination.  It 
happened  that  I  could  not  conveniently  be  sent  away 
with  him  to  any  relative  or  friend.  Ford  had  alwa>  s 
a  certain  quiet,  unoffending  assurance  in  dealing  witli 
a  contretemps  of  this  sort ;  it  was  a  small  matter,  bi  t 
I  do  not  believe  many  men  would  have  put  forward  1  o 
strangers  the  suggestion  which  he  offered — that  le 
and  I  should  go  upon  a  walking  tour,  with  teaching  c  n 
and  by  the  way.  Nor  would  every  man  have  mace 
the  suggestion  seem  the  most  natural  thing  in  the 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  67 

wcrld.  At  all  events  we  set  out,  and  walked  and  talked 
for  three  weeks  in  the  Lake  District.  I  find  it  hard  to 
say  what  it  was,  exactly,  that  he  taught  me  during 
th  s  time.  He  spoke  strictly,  while  we  tramped,  or 
sa ;  in  the  stuffy  sitting-rooms  of  North  country  inns, 
ab  Dut  Latin  and  Greek  grammar,  quadratic  equations, 
Ai  gevin  kings  or  French  genders  ;  but  I  think  the 
chief  thing  that  I  learned  was  a  certain  sense  of 
command  over  subjects  that  were  in  themselves  com- 
paratively silly  and  meaningless — petty  concerns,  in 
th<;  handling  of  which  Ford  seemed  able  to  communi- 
cate to  me  a  kind  of  authoritativeness.  I  know  that 
when  the  ordeal  came  I  went  through  it  without  a 
tremor,  and  found  myself  writing  my  papers  like  a 
tradesman  parcelling  up  goods  from  a  well-arranged 
stc  ck ;  and  the  arrangement  had  been  Ford's  doing. 
I  v.'on  that  scholarship  in  virtue  of  an  attitude  of  mind. 
Ford's  principle  as  an  examination  coach,  I  afterwards 
learned,  was  a  cynical  one  ;  he  held  that  examinations 
arc  of  little  use  as  tests  of  general  abihty — that  they 
test,  in  fact,  nothing  much  but  the  ability  to  pass 
exi  .minations,  an  isolated  faculty  of  no  very  high 
value  or  significance.  He  did  not  coach  by  giving 
dodges  or  tips,  but  by  getting  the  available  contents  of 
a  jmpil's  mind  into  a  particular  artificial  order  and 
aningement,  suitable  not  for  genuine  thought,  but 
for  the  easy  handling  and  sorting  out  of  the  pellets  of 
fact  for  which  examiners  chiefly  make  requisition.  A 
wholesome   contempt    for   the   entire    business    was, 


68  W.  E.  FORD 

perhaps,  not  the  least  valuable  part  of  the  equipment 
that  he  supplied. 

This,  Ford's  first  experiment  in  coaching,  chanced 
to  be  something  of  a  turning-point  in  his  manner  of 
life,  quite  apart  from  teaching.  Our  walking  tour 
gave  him  the  idea  that  it  is  worth  while  to  travel  at 
home  as  well  as  abroad  ;  and  it  was  not  long  before  he 
had  set  himself  to  the  discovery  of  England.  He 
loved  places  as  places,  but  his  insatiable  passion, 
which  became  an  important  influence  in  his  later  life, 
was  for  understanding  the  minds  of  different  types 
of  men.  He  studied  men  as  though  he  were  giving 
himself  the  training  that  a  statesman  ought  to  undergo. 
He  came  to  know  the  common  Englishman,  the  worker, 
in  most  of  his  typical  varieties,  so  well  that  he  could  not 
talk  about  the  working  classes  for  five  minutes  to  any 
ordinary  member  of  the  upper  or  professional  class 
without  convincing  him  that  he,  Ford,  was  talking 
nonsense,  in  plain  contradiction  of  the  facts  that  a  man 
can  read  in  his  newspaper  any  day  of  the  week.  It  was 
not  that  he  suggested  any  social  theory  which  ran 
against  his  interlocutor's  politics  ;  in  the  ordinary 
modem  sense  of  the  word  *  politics  '  Ford  had  none  . 
but  his  knowledge  bridged  a  gap  which  few  gentee" 
people  can  even  imagine  as  bridged  without  rea" 
mental  discomfort.  Consequently  he  seldom  let  him- 
self be  drawn  into  talk  with  the  well-to-do  abou1 
*  the  masses.'  His  imderstanding  of  them  remainec 
a  personal  hobby  that  he  could  share  with  few. 


CHAPTER  V 

T\  'O  explanations  are  due  to  the  reader  before  I  write 
of  the  next  period  in  Ford's  life.  The  first  concerns 
m\'  source  of  information  with  regard  to  a  peculiarly 
intimate  phase  of  his  experience.  I  have  given  myself 
th(  task  of  setting  down,  as  simply  as  possible,  every- 
thiig  without  exception  that  seems  really  typical 
of  Ford  as  I  knew  him.  I  do  not  think  that  an  honest 
biography  can  be  written  otherwise.  But  in  reading 
a  V.iography  I  have  often  been  conscious  of  a  scruple, 
wh'^n  the  book  came  within  touch  of  the  ultimate 
peretralia  of  the  subject — a  sense  that  the  biographer 
mu  ^t  have  overstepped  some  boundary,  not  of  reticence 
so  much  as  of  confidence,  in  saying  or  hinting  so  much  ; 
and  with  this  sense  there  comes  a  reluctance  to  read 
further  without  some  explicit  or  implicit  assurance 
tha  one's  peering  is,  as  it  were,  authorised,  and  that 
one  is  not  an  accessory  after  the  fact,  conniving  for 
curiosity's  sake  in  the  writer's  immodest  tweaking 
aside  of  curtains. 

Tie  difficulty  is  obvious  when  one  becomes  the 
writer ;  it  would  be  a  clumsy  interruption  to  the  flow 
of  tlic  story  to  be  always  giving  chapter  and  verse  in 
proof  of  loyalty  to  a  friend's  confidence  ;    but  the 

69 


70  W.  E.  FORD 

fact  remains  of  the  reader's  potential  discomfort  when 
the  subject  of  a  biography  seems  to  be  laid  out  upon 
the  dissecting-table.  To  avoid  a  series  of  self-defensive 
paragraphs  throughout  this  chapter,  I  propose  to  state, 
once  and  for  all,  my  reasons  for  believing  that  Ford 
would  have  passed  an  even  closer  description  of  his 
experience  as  a  lover  than  I  can  base  upon  the  things 
that  he  told  me. 

As  we  talked,  and  as  he  dropped  out,  one  by  one, 
detail  after  detail  of  his  own  story,  he  continually 
recurred  to  a  fundamental  desire  that  others  might 
only  know,  through  clear  statement,  what  he  himself 
had  learned  with  such  slow  difficulty  through  an 
ignorant  process  of  trial  and  error.  '  I  wish  I  were  a 
novelist,'  he  would  say,  and  would  go  on  to  speak  of 
the  manner  in  which  he  would  construct  a  novel  upon 
the  basis  of  his  past  experience — a  novel  that  should  be 
a  plea  for  frankness,  for  straight  dealing  in  that 
market  of  the  emotions  to  which  a  man  and  a  woman 
reciprocally  commit  themselves,  on  approval,  when 
once  they  have  tacitly  admitted  that  love  may  be  the; 
outcome  of  nearer  acquaintance. 

Also,  he  had  no  pleasure  in  reticence  for  its  own  sake , 
often  maintaining  that  human  relationships  would 
develop  along  very  much  happier  lines  if  only  we  coulc  1 
all  be  persuaded  to  keep  no  cards  up  our  sleeves. 

My  second  difficulty,  it  will  be  guessed,  is  in  writin;^ 
about  the  object  of  Ford's  predilection.  It  does  not 
matter  that   recognition,   among  a  certain  smallis] 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  71 

circle  of  friends  and  acquaintances,  is  inevitable,  for 
th»Te  is  no  reason  why  it  should  be  in  any  degree  dis- 
comforting unless  to  the  mind  that  makes  reticence  a 
fetish.  (And  this  type  of  mind,  I  must  confess,  I  think 
it  I  plain  duty  as  well  as  a  delight  to  shock.)  Outside 
this  circle,  my  alteration  of  the  name  will  sufficiently 
cover  the  tracks. 

rt  was  through  his  contact  with  working  men  that 
Ford  first  became  really  conscious  of  woman  as  a 
natural  force.  Hitherto  he  had  taken  women  for 
gnnted,  and  indeed  had  seen  but  little  of  them. 
Having  grown  up  motherless  and  sisterless,  without 
ev(-n  an  aunt  to  stand  for  femininity  among  his  youth- 
ful conceptions,  it  was  perhaps  natural  that  he  should 
have  almost  ignored  the  phenomenon  for  so  long. 
If  he  had  been  made  of  more  quickly  inflammable 
material  in  the  amatory  sense,  he  might  well  have 
stumbled  into  initiation,  in  his  ignorance,  upon  the 
lov/est  of  planes  ;  he  always  declared  that  here  fortune 
must  have  been  on  his  side.  It  was  curious  that  his 
first  confused  inkling  of  vital  aspects  with  regard  to 
one  half  of  humanity  should  have  come  through  his 
int  jrest  in  the  cruder  strata  of  the  other  half — through 
the  blunt  tadk  of  men  in  a  wharfside  inn  or  a  booth  at 
an  agricultural  fair. 

He  described  such  talk  as  affecting  him,  whether  it 
was  characterised  by  a  beery  jocularity  or  by  a  rough 
seni-articulate  earnestness,  with  an  odd  sense  of 
paradox.    Woman  was,  alternatively,  a  hoarse  joke. 


72  W.  E.  FORD 

a  terror,  a  prop  and  stay,  a  whirlwind  of  words,  a 
Silence.  Within  it  all,  the  strong  S5mthetic  faculty 
in  Ford's  mind  seemed  to  discern,  subconsciously  at 
first,  a  picture  of  a  woman's  world,  seen  darkly  in  the 
very  smoky  glass  from  which  the  men  transmitted 
these  contradictory  reflections.  His  general  impression 
was  that  women  stood  for  something  that  he  had  not  yet 
begun  to  realise,  something  vaguely  fundamental  that 
was  treated  by  crude  masculinity  with  a  kind  of  ribald 
respect.  There  must  be,  he  began  to  infer,  a  whole 
hemisphere,  hidden  from  him  hitherto  like  the  other 
side  of  the  moon,  of  women's  interests,  women's  share 
in  the  upholding  of  society — woman's  outlook.  Upper 
middle-class  life,  so  far  as  he  had  seen  it  in  being  and 
as  a  whole,  had  successfully  concealed  from  him  that 
any  such  complex  could  co-exist  with  the  world  of 
masculine  thought  and  organisation.  He  had  thought 
of  woman,  before,  as  a  remote  and  a  comfortably 
undefined  variant  of  man  :  an  adjunct,  biologically 
necessary,  and  economically  valuable  in  the  mainten- 
ance of  domestic  functions,  to  be  classed  as  such 
without  further  intellectual  bother.  He  now  began 
to  envisage  the  feminine  hemisphere  as  a  dimly  lit 
but  an  essential  reahty  ;  and  thence  he  gradually  came 
to  the  realisation  that  the  masculine  and  the  feminine 
outlook  had  no  dividing  boundary  but  were  coter- 
minous, different  indeed  but  not  separate — intricately, 
indissolubly  interrelated. 
Thus  his  interest  in  man,  abstract  and  then  con- 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  73 

cr<;te,  led  him  inevitably  to  an  interest  in  woman  ; 
abstract  at  first,  and  then  .  .  .  concrete.  In  a  sense 
it  is  true  that  he  brought  to  first  love  the  spirit  of  a 
detached  inquirer ;  but  not  in  the  sense  in  which 
detachment  means  bloodlessness,  or  morbid  intro- 
spection, or  over-analysis.  He  had  the  true  instinct 
to  empty  himself  of  experience  in  order  to  know 
experience  ;  he  emerged  into  the  sun-bathed  world  of 
first  love  as  a  chicken  comes  out  of  its  shell.  But  his 
intellect  was  very  much  part  of  the  chicken. 

Mary  Worthington  (as  I  shall  call  her)  was  a  girl 
to  whom  slumming  was  a  new  hobby  in  a  world  that 
consisted  very  largely  of  the  raw  material  for  new 
hobbies.  Tall,  slight,  fair,  and  expensive-looking,  she 
came  as  Lady  Bountiful  to  a  home  in  Bermondsey 
where  Ford,  pipe  in  mouth,  was  lending  the  woman 
of  the  house  a  hand  with  the  mangle,  and  discussing 
with  her  the  husband's  chance  of  finding  the  job  that 
he  had  gone  out  to  look  for.  The  husband  was  a 
fri(  nd  whom  he  had  picked  up  the  day  before,  a  ne'er- 
do  weal  who,  having  broken  his  wife's  arm  in  the 
coiuse  of  the  drunken  fit  that  had  brought  about  his 
most  recent  dismissal,  would  on  this  day  have  been 
coi  tritely  helping  with  the  week's  washing  if  Ford 
had  not  hounded  him  out  in  quest  of  work  and  taken 
his  place  at  the  wheel.  Ford  was  explained  to  Mary 
Wc  rthington  as  '  a  young  friend  of  me  'usband's,'  and 
had  to  explain  himself  further,  on  interrogation,  as 


74  W.  E.  FORD 

being  not  out  of  work  too,  but  on  a  holiday.  His 
tone  and  manner  must  have  behed  the  appearance 
and  costume  that  he  affected  for  these  occasions, 
for  it  followed,  the  mangling  being  finished,  that  Miss 
Worthington  quite  welcomed  Ford's  tentative  readiness 
to  accompany  her  down  the  street. 

They  began,  naturally,  to  talk  of  working-class  prob- 
lems, and  Mary,  a  novice  in  such  matters,  questioned 
and  listened  eagerly  as  Ford  produced  his  views. 
Always  keen  to  talk  down  to  the  roots  of  a  subject  in 
the  company  of  any  one  with  whom  he  felt  sympathetic, 
he  must  have  been  at  his  best  in  this  conversation. 
Mary,  chiefly  impressed  at  first  by  his  luciciity  of 
statement,  quickly  caught  the  glow  of  his  enthusiasm, 
and  gave  light  for  light  by  enveloping  him  in  that 
softly  luminous  atmosphere  of  appreciation  in  which 
thought  unfolds  and  blossoms  into  language  unafraid. 
He  was  an  engaging  mystery  to  her — some  young 
socialist  poet,  she  thought  him,  an  extreme  product  of 
that  working-class  education  of  which  she  had  vaguely 
heard  at  home.  She  had  not  got  past  the  suggestion 
of  the  artisan  about  his  clothes,  and  the  suggestion 
gave  the  secure  sense  of  a  gulf  across  which  romantic 
interest  could  play  quite  uncommitted.  Ford, 
engrossed  in  his  thesis,  was  more  or  less  conscious  of  a 
new  vibration,  a  subtly  electrical  thrill.  He  was  oi 
the  type  that  enters  into  personal  relations  through 
fundamentals  rather  than  by  way  of  small  surface 
steps  towards  intimacy  ;    and  there  was  something 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  75 

no  /el  in  the  quality  of  his  hstener's  attention,  a  certain 
delicate  allurement  that  beckoned  oh  his  words,  an 
un  ^poken  assurance  that  nothing  need  he  too  near  his 
heart  for  speech. 

A  crucial  moment  came  when  they  discovered  that 
th(y  had  walked  nearly  to  Knightsbridge,  and  that 
the  Worthingtons'  house  was  close  at  hand.  There  was 
a  pause  at  a  comer,  a  pretext  of  a  few  final  questions, 
a  spinning  out  of  the  replies,  while  each  was  consolidat- 
ing the  rapidly  formed  decision  that  this  must  not  be 
the  end.  .  .  . 

They  agreed,  both  of  them  half  shamefacedly,  upon 
an  hour  the  following  day  when  both  would  be  likely 
to  revisit  the  lady  of  the  mangle.  It  was  important, 
as  they  very  rightly  reassured  one  another,  to  know 
as  soon  as  possible  whether  the  husband  had  or  had 
not  managed  to  find  work — and,  if  he  had  not,  to 
collaborate  at  once  in  putting  to  the  test  their  value 
as  whole-hearted  votaries  of  the  poor  and  the  dis- 
honoured. 

The  man  had  not  found  work ;  he  was  a  specimen 
to(*  deeply  sunken  to  find  anything,  unless  by  chance, 
wii  hout  the  aid  of  others,  his  superiors  either  in  virtue 
of  vitality  or  of  social  handicap  in  the  race  of  life. 
Hi;  case,  and  that  of  his  wife  and  children,  made  a 
ve:y  pretty  problem  for  Ford  and  Mary  Worthington 
to  solve,  and  on  the  whole  they  solved  it  cleanly.  But 
its  solution  was  a  long  business — any  one  who  has 
touched  social  problems  in  the  concrete,  even  with  the 


76  W.  E.  FORD 

most  amateurish  hand,  will  know  how  long — and  in 
the  process  they  raised  a  very  different  problem  for 
themselves,  an  enigma  that  was  to  prove  too  hard  for 
final  solution  of  any  kind. 

Ford  had  fallen  in  love,  of  course,  with  Mary 
Worthington,  if  we  are  to  consider  it  crudely  ;  but  the 
phrase  *  to  fall  in  love '  admits  of  many  varying 
interpretations,  and  I  think,  if  I  am  to  state  my  own 
view  of  his  condition  with  a  bluntness  equal  to  that 
of  the  conventional  admission,  that  there  was  a  sense 
in  which  he  was  never  in  love  with  her  at  all,  nor  she 
with  him.  He  suffered  agonies  ;  but  they  were  not 
agonies  of  desire,  and  they  led  to  no  crucial  deter- 
mination. On  the  other  hand,  he  undoubtedly  found 
Mary  indispensable,  as  she  found  him,  for  the  sake  of 
some  unique  current  that  could  flow  only  through 
their  association.  Ford,  his  status  now  confessed — 
no  romantic,  self-educated  artisan,  but,  even  worse, 
perhaps,  to  the  moneyed  mind,  a  mere  upper-middle- 
class  struggler — became  an  occasional,  a  very  occa- 
sional caller  who  disguised  the  shabbiness  of  his  best 
suit  in  the  darker  comers  of  the  pretentious  Worthing- 
ton drawing-room.  The  two  met  far  oftener — the 
Worthingtons  would  have  been  deeply  scandalised  if 
they  had  known — as  coadjutors  in  promoting  the 
welfare  of  the  down-trodden.  (No  doubt  they  met 
for  the  sake  of  meeting  ;  but  it  should  be  recorded 
that  several  other  '  cases  '  are  still  voluble  in  their 
appreciation  of  the  sympathy  so  uncommonly  practical, 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  77 

so  effectively  helpful,  that  gave  them  a  fresh  and  an 
actually  progressive  start  in  life.) 

^lary  Worthington  had  played  with  flirtation  in  her 
tim3,  and  had  become  bored  with  it.  She  had  never 
encDuntered  a  deep  personal  emotion  before,  and  she 
pla;  'ed  with  it,  in  herself,  as  a  cat  plays  with  a  mouse 
— Q-  as  a  mouse  might  surrender  itself  to  a  game  of 
hid*  -and-seek  \\ith  a  cat.  With  Ford's  emotions  as 
distinct  from  her  own  she  did  not  play,  but  rather 
commiserated  them  and  him.  At  this  time  they  quite 
wished  that  they  could  marry,  but  the  thing  was 
cleaiy  preposterous.  Sir  Joshua  Worthington  had 
tens  of  thousands  a  year,  and  no  intention  of  sharing 
then  in  any  proportion  with  needy  aspirants  to  his 
daui;hter's  hand.  Ford  had,  by  now,  £200  or  ;£25o. 
Mar/  had  expensive  tastes  .  .  .  and  none  was  to  prove 
mon;  expensive,  as  a  matter  of  spiritual  economics, 
than  her  taste  for  Ford.  She  could  neither  accept  him 
wholly  nor  give  him  up.     They  hung  fire  interminably. 

If  Ford  had  been  able  to  play  the  impetuous  suitor 
whoh-heartedly,  things  might  have  been  different. 
But  le  held  a  curious  theory — his  belief  in  it  was  life- 
long, and  I  have  an  idea,  though  he  never  told  me  so, 
that  it  originated  with  Paul  Ford — that  no  such  thing 
as  a  one-sided  love  could  exist,  and  that  the  ultimate 
test  :or  the  reality  and  permanence  of  a  passion  lies 
in  th(  perfection  of  its  mutuality.  An  endless  number 
of  UT;  happy  marriages,  he  would  maintain,  come  of 
engagements  that  either  the  man  or  the  woman  has 


78  W.  E.  FORD 

forced  on,  relying  on  a  single,  individual  flood-tide 
of  the  emotions  to  float  a  vessel,  in  which  two  must 
live,  over  all  the  shallows  of  hfe.  It  was  not  that  one 
loved  more  and  the  other  less,  and  that  the  less  Wc.s 
bound  to  stultify  the  more ;  the  often-accepted 
doctrine  would  then  be  equally  tenable  that  the  less- 
loving  could  '  learn  to  love  '  the  more-loving — that  the 
greater  passion  would  raise  the  lesser  to  its  own  level. 
By  Ford's  theory  there  was  no  greater  passion,  but 
only  a  passion  that  was  temporarily  more  vehement  ; 
greater  in  momentary  pressure,  but  less  in  ultimate 
volume.  Ford  was  always,  if  he  was  anything,  an 
advocate  of  the  liberation  rather  than  the  repressicn 
of  natural  impulse,  but  when  sex  came  into  questicn 
he  carried  this  principle  into  a  further  region  than 
that  of  the  plain  issue  between  self-expression  and 
self-restriction.  *  The  sex-motif,'  he  once  wrote  i:o 
me,  *  was  essential  to  the  orchestration  of  life  millioiis 
of  years,  probably,  before  man  appeared  upon  tlie 
earth.  It  is  so  fundamental  that  we,  who  in  a  sophis- 
ticated civilisation  have  lost  control  of  fundamentals, 
have  yet  to  take  jolly  good  care  that  it  doesn't  rin 
away  with  us  unawares.  We  mustn't  shove  it  under  r- 
things  that  are  shoved  under  go  rotten,  and  fester  beli^w 
the  surface — but  we  have  got  to  see  that  when  it  con  3s 
up  it  shan't  come  up  with  a  rush  that  sweeps  us  (and 
others  besides  us)  off  our  civilised  feet.' 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  Ford  deliberately  refus  od 
to  force  the  pace  with  Mary  Worthington.     His  o^/n 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  79 

desire  was  strong  at  times — and  there  was  also  the 
convention  by  which  only  the  man  may  give  even  the 
sh^htest  expUcit  intimation  that  desire  exists.  But 
he  refrained,  not  only  because  he  knew  that  her  emotion 
was  slighter  or  more  inhibited  than  his  own,  but  also 
because  he  was  assured  that  no  passionate  impulse  of 
his  own  was  justified  or  justifiable  unless  it  evoked, 
spontaneously,  without  any  letting  loose  of  floodgates 
on  his  part,  an  equal  preliminary  response  on  hers. 

Desire,  besides,  was  not  for  either  of  them  the 
beginning  and  the  end  of  the  matter.  They  desider- 
ated a  complete  union  of  mind  and  outlook — not  a 
sarreness  but  a  correlation,  a  perfection  of  give-and- 
takt '..  And  there  were  subjects  on  which  give-and-take 
was  distressingly  imperfect. 

Ill  this  respect  they  had  met,  at  first,  under  very 
favc  urable  auspices.  Mary  had  been  brought  up  in  a 
family  atmosphere  of  gold-cased  Toryism,  and  had 
enccuntered  Ford  over  a  question  of  the  practical 
application  of  social  theory — a  troublesome  region  of 
thought  from  which  the  gold-casing  had  efficiently 
shielded  her  hitherto.  As  regards  Bermondsey  her 
mind  had  been  virgin  ground ;  she  had  not  learned 
the  comfortable  Calvinism  that  is  convinced  of  the 
pre-(Tdained  imder-doggishness  of  the  under-dog,  or 
she  ^vould  not  have  gone  a-slumming  in  so  ingenuous 
a  hope  of  ameliorating  its  lot.  Consequently  Ford's 
theojy,  combined  with  the  visible  and  unqualified 
success  of  Ford's  practice,  had  appealed  to  her  as 


8o  W.  E.  FORD 

common  sense  idealism  of  quite  unquestionable  excel- 
lence, and  she  became  the  convert-at-sight  of  a  social 
doctrine  at  which  gilded  Tories,  Manchester  Liberals, 
and  Marxian  Socialists  would  have  turned  up  their 
noses  with  a  rare  unanimity.  Ford's  later  dictum, 
*  a  man  is  worth  what  he  wills,'  was  the  real  root  «)f 
the  lesson  that  Mary  so  readily  learned  from  him  ;  and 
no  system  of  government  or  of  social  organisatic^n 
has  yet  been  put  forward  that  adequately  answers 
the  demands  of  such  a  principle.  But  Mary  took  the 
notion  in  her  stride,  quite  naturally,  on  account  of  its 
obvious  rightness,  oblivious  of  the  fact  that  it  upset 
the  foundations  of  her  upbringing. 

None  the  less,  those  foundations  were  upset ;  and 
when  other  points  arose,  upon  which  Ford's  convictions 
and  her  carefully  ingrained  prejudices  were  at  variance, 
she  had  a  feeling  that  he  had  almost  stolen  a  march 
upon  her  by  establishing  in  her  mind  his  own  sense 
that  human  values  were  absolute,  not  relative.  Tht^y 
disagreed  lamentably  about  the  rights  and  wrongs  of 
the  Boer  War,  and  she  felt,  throughout  the  controvci  sy 
upon  which  that  minor  tragedy  led  them  reluctan  ly 
to  engage,  that  he  had  rather  unfairly  made  out  lis 
case  for  the  Boers  in  advance,  when  he  had  made  it 
plain  to  her  too  willing  comprehension  that  the  Brit  sh 
worker  was  both  misunderstood  and  exploited,  snd 
then  reviled  and  oppressed  if  he  ever  resented  he 
misunderstanding  or  rebelled  against  the  exploitati  n. 
Her   case    against  the    Boers   rested  upon  no  such 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  8i 

theoretic  grounds.  They  were  rebels  and  traitors — 
Sir  Joshua,  her  father,  had  carried  repetition  on  this 
point  to  the  level  of  hypnotic  conviction.  They  were 
Enemies  of  Our  Empire.  They  were  dirty  brutes  who 
didn  t  wash.  (Ford  unwisely  ventured  the  witticism 
that  their  real  opponents  were  mining  prospectuses 
that  wouldn't  wash  either — one  says  such  things  in 
moments  of  heat.)  The  natural  result  of  such  a  dis- 
cussion was  mere  deadlock.  Their  mutuality,  on  this 
quesi  ion,  became  a  mutuality  of  pained  surprise,  with 
the  ])hrase,  *  Oh,  why  can't  you  understand  .  .  .  ?  * 
as  its  dominant  motive.  (No  one,  of  course,  was 
drear  ling,  then,  of  an  ultimate  reconciUation  between 
Boer  and  Briton.) 

Thi  Boer  War  was  typical  of  their  subjects  of  dis- 
agree nent.  Like  most  people,  Mary  was  ready  to 
rejoice  in  the  sweeping  tide  of  patriotic  enthusiasm 
that  surged  over  England  at  the  time,  and  instinctively 
hostile  to  the  appearance  of  any  critical  breakwater. 
When  Ford  spoke,  in  terms  that  suggested  the  diagnosis 
of  a  disease,  of  the  muddy  waves  of  slum  wastrels  that 
rolled  rioting  over  London  when  news  came  of  some 
barel}  averted  fiasco  at  the  front,  she  was  saddened 
and  b<  wildered.  It  seemed  to  her  literally  disgraceful, 
it  seeried  to  manifest  some  fatal  kink  in  Ford's  char- 
acter that  he  could  fail  to  be  at  one  with  the  general 
sentiment.  There  were  occasions,  she  felt — and  there 
are  mt  ny  people  who  feel  as  she  did — when  no  one  has 
a  right  to  hold  an  individual  opinion. 

F 


82  W.  E.  FORD 

There  were  also  generic  subjects  to  which  personal, 
distinctive  views  seemed  to  her  to  be  misapplied.    The 
foremost  of  these,  as  may  easily  be  guessed,  was  religion. 
Ford  was  beginning  at  this  time  an  attempt  to  achie\  e 
clarity  of  mind  as  regards  the  meaning  and  the  useful- 
ness of  church  doctrine.     Characteristically,  he  saw 
the  conflict  between  a  spiritual  and  a  material  inter- 
pretation of  life  as  a  mere  waste  of  time  ;   he  wanted 
to  arrive  at  a  unity — to  see  how  the  material  express(is 
the  spiritual,  and  how  the  spiritual  justifies  the  material. 
Mary  had  learned  to  keep  the  two  aspects  in  water- 
tight compartments,  and  by  acquired  instinct  she  wiis 
uneasily    mistrustful    of    any    tampering    with    the 
partition.     Her    church-loyalty    demanded    that    the 
spiritual  should  disclaim  all  need  of  support  from  the 
material,  should  regard  any  association,  indeed,  in  the 
light  of  a  contamination  ;  he,  hot  upon  the  track  of  his 
thesis,  would  fail  to  notice  her  distress  as  he  maintained 
not  only  that  materialism  was  contaminating  only  in' 
so  far  as  it  became  divorced  from  its  correlative  and 
corrective,  the  spiritual  outlook  (on  this  point  alcne 
they  might  have  found  a  basis  of  agreement),  but  al:o, 
and  the  more  insistently  for  her  opposition,  that  1  he 
spiritual  outlook  could  have  neither  vitality  nor  breadth 
till  it  had  condescended  to  tussle  with  the  gross  'st 
and  grimiest  facts  of  man's  material  existence.     In 
Ford's  view,  no  comfort  of  the  soul  was  worth  m  ^re 
than  the  cushioned  comfort  of  a  sofa  until  the  neai  i?st 
slum  had  been  accounted  for  ;  just  as  no  explanation 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  83 

of  bodily  things  was  worth  looking  at  that  did  not 
take  into  account  their  symboHc,  even  their  sacra- 
mental, aspect  as  crude  and  imperfect  manifestations 
of  something  spiritual. 

From  religion,  and  from  sacramentalism — the  main 
stv.mbling-block  of  all  religious  discussion — they  fell 
ve:y  naturally  into  an  interminable  argument  about 
mi  rriage.  It  is  difficult  to  realise  how  this  couple, 
in  many  respects  so  ill-assorted,  found  it  so  easy,  as 
to  them  it  appears  to  have  been,  to  talk  freely  and 
op'^nly  about  marriage  and  about  the  awkward  prob- 
lems of  sex  that  any  frank  discussion  of  marriage 
inevitably  drags  into  court.  I  can  only  explain  that 
Fo:d  was,  upon  this  subject,  a  rather  exceptional 
being.  He  could  talk  to  boys  about  sex  in  a  way  that 
ma  ie  the  whole  business  seem  as  simple  and  straight- 
forvard  as  walking  across  a  road  ;  and  I  can  imagine 
that  he  could  have  talked  about  sex  to  a  girl  in  much 
the  same  irresistibly  ingenuous  tone.  And  there  is 
also  the  fact  that  on  this  point  he  and  Mary  met  in  a 
corrmon  ingenuousness — she  had  been  shielded  from 
sex  as  from  slumdom,  and  brought  to  the  one  as  fresh 
and  natural  a  mind  as  to  the  other.  At  all  events 
the}  contrived  to  agree  about  sex — very  much  in  the 
abstract,  of  course — far  more  distinctly  than  the  really 
nice  minded  would  think  allowable,  while  maintain- 
ing m  unalterable  antagonism  upon  the  question  of 
maniage. 

(r  must  be  explained  that  the  mere  word '  marriage  ' 


84  W.  E.  FORD 

had  no  terrors  for  them  personally.  The  possibility 
of  their  getting  married  was  by  this  time  quite  a 
commonplace  between  them,  and  if  once  their  various 
disagreements  had  been  completely  and  satisfactorily 
resolved,  they  would  have  sought  out  their  officiating 
parson  and  would  have  had  the  knot  tied  without  even 
a  momentary  qualm.) 

Naturally,  it  was  their  puzzled  contemplation  of  the 
married  Hves  of  the  poor  that  first  set  them  talking 
about  marriage  in  general.  The  attitude  of  their 
Bermondsey  friend,  the  lady  of  the  mangle,  towards 
her  dreadful  husband — an  attitude  of  disillusion  indeed, 
but  stoic  rather  than  cynical — became  a  nucleus  for 
one  part  of  their  discussion.  There  must  be  something 
about  marriage,  they  decided — about  the  definite 
burning  of  boats  that  it  involved,  all  the  more  definite 
for  the  poor,  who  have  no  subconscious  thought  of 
divorce  as  a  possible  way  of  retreat  in  the  last  extremity 
— something  of  extraordinary  efficacy  in  leading  people 
to  make  the  best  of  one  another,  cutting  underneath 
the  irritations  and  petulancies  that  so  often  bring  a, 
friendship  or  an  unfettered  union  to  an  end.  Their 
disagreement  was  about  the  nature  of  this  something 
Mary  was  sure  that  it  was  the  element  of  compulsior 
that  settled  the  matter.  Any  two  people,  she  woulci 
say,  can  keep  together  up  to  a  certain  point ;  beyonc  I 
this  point,  whether  they  reach  it  sooner  or  later,  thei : 
interests,  their  ways  or  their  views  of  life,  have  to 
clash.     Here  the   sheer  imperative  of  the  marriag,^ 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  85 

contract  says  its  say  ;  and  the  impetus  of  its  absolute 
declaration,  *  You  must  go  on  with  it/  tides  the  dis- 
p  Atants  over  these  inevitable  shoals  into  the  quieter 
and  deeper  waters  of  mutual  acceptance  and  toleration. 
Tie  word  toleration  was  to  Ford,  in  such  a  connection, 
\h:e  a  red  rag  to  a  bull.  He  would  have  none  of  it. 
Tolerance  was  a  fine  thing  between  enemies,  an  admir- 
al »le  half-way  house  for  those  who,  tempted  to  hatred, 
pieferred  the  magnanimous  alternative  of  giving 
cr  idit  for  sincerity  to  opponents  with  whom  they  con- 
fe  sed  to  a  misunderstanding.  But  it  was  not  the 
attitude  for  people  who  loved,  or  professed  to  love. 
M  irriage,  for  these,  was  not  to  be  a  compelling  tie  for 
thi  reluctant,  but  a  splendid  declaration  of  mutual 
literty  for  the  willing — a  mutual  declaration  of  inde- 
pendence in  interdependence  that  should  commit  a 
min  and  a  woman,  not  to  acquiescence  in  an  outside 
authority  that  strapped  them,  as  it  were,  together, 
but  to  their  realised  and  expressed  confidence  in  an 
inrer  authority,  common  to  them  both,  that  could  be 
rel  ed  upon  to  dissolve  their  inevitable  differences  of 
idei  into  a  common  unity  of  purpose. 

I'ord  in  fact  believed,  as  Mary  complained,  that 
marriage,  the  ceremony  and  the  contract,  '  didn't 
really  do  anything  '  in  the  sense  of  forcibly  fixing  a 
spi:itual  relationship  in  a  state  of  permanence,  or  of 
supplying  a  compelling  spiritual  motive  from  without 
for  the  tiding-over  of  a  period  of  stress.  He  held  that 
its  influence  from  without  was  solely  on  the  side  of 


86  W.  E.  FORD 

respectability  and  correctitude — powerful,  useful,  but 
not  spiritual  forces.  Its  spiritual  significance  lay 
wholly  in  the  degree  to  which  it  was  the  symbol  and 
the  expression  of  an  inner  feeling,  a  nucleus  of  expressed 
purpose  upon  which  thought  could  focus  and  around 
which  all  the  vague  sentiments,  emotions,  and  aspira- 
tions that  come  and  pass  in  a  more  fleeting  relationship 
might  cluster  and  co-ordinate. 

This  notion  of  a  mental  nucleus  had  a  great  deal  to 
do  with  Ford's  view  of  sex  and  of  physical  passion. 
*  It  is  fatal,'  he  wrote  to  me  on  another  occasion,  *  to 
let  one's  thought  dwell  upon  these  physical  urgencies  ; 
the  more  you  are  an  educated,  civilised  creature,  the 
more  fatal  it  is — a  developed  imagination  brings  up 
such  terrific  reinforcements  !  And  it  is  just  as  fatal 
to  determine,  in  a  merely  negative  spirit,  not  to  think 
about  them  :  blank  inhibition  (if — if  it  succeeds) 
only  drives  the  thing  underground.  The  equally 
difficult  effort  of  will  implied  in  "  thinking  about  some- 
thing else  "  is  at  least  harmless  (again,  if  it  succeeds) 
but  it  merely  shelves  the  difficulty  from  one  time  tC' 
the  next,  and'  I  am  not  sure  that  it  doesn't  end  bj 
overcrowding  the  shelf  to  toppling-point.  My  owi 
remedy  is,  as  usual,  co-ordination.  Never  let  yoursel 
look  at  the  business  as  if  it  were  an  isolated  phenomenon . 
Think  about  "something  else" — think  about  every- 
thing else — but  think  about  other  things  as  they  ar? 
affected  by  the  sex  difficulty.  That 's  the  way  to  ge : 
that  confounded  Voice  of  Nature  into  a  proper  frami 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  87 

of  mind  about  its  relative  importance  and  unimportance. 
Mc.ke  it  realise  that  it  was  always  meant  to  be  the 
seivant,  never  the  autocrat  of  Life.  .  .  .* 

And  I  have  gathered  that  Ford  talked  to  Mary 
\\')rthington,  not  in  so  frank  a  strain  but  to  the  same 
mere  generalised  effect,  about  that  perpetual  bother 
of  5ex  which  so  afflicts  the  unacknowledged  imderhves 
of  civilised  people.  Their  discussion  of  marriage,  first 
frc  m  the  spiritual,  then  from  the  social,  point  of  view, 
ha  1  to  come  down — such  was  their  mutual  sincerity — 
to  the  material  bedrock  of  physical  fact.  But  Ford, 
while  insisting  through  all  deUcacy  of  treatment  upon 
th(  sheer  reahties,  kept  clear  his  main  principle  of 
coordination.  And,  in  the  interests  of  co-ordination, 
and  of  his  principle  that  sex  must  somehow  be  brought 
int )  proportion  with  the  other  demands  of  Nature  and 
of  :ivilisation,  he  was  strong  in  his  insistence  that  the 
meatal  nucleus  provided  by  the  human  convention  of 
marriage  was  incalculably  effective  in  making  passion 
a  relative,  not  an  absolute  factor  in  the  Ufe  of  man. 
Thi  marriage-ideal  makes  it  an  essential  that  people 
shculd  take  other  things  equally  into  account.  It 
briigs  everything  in — necessary  adaptabilities  in 
matters  of  temper — the  financial  element — questions 
of  habit  and  idiosyncrasy — all  these  matters,  each 
with  its  place  and  purpose,  come  in  to  qualify  the 
sinj^'le,  sheer  animal  obsession  which  sex  can  only  too 
easJy  become  if  it  is  regarded  for  itself  alone.  I 
remember  that  Ford  said  once,  in  conversation,  '  Sex 


88  W.  E.  FORD 

has  become  top-heavy  in  civihsed  hfe.  Marriage  is 
the  only  efficient  ballast  that  has  been  discovered  so 
far.' 

Their  own  friendship,  for  all  the  fundamental  dis- 
agreements by  which  it  was  fretted,  certainly  had 
much  the  quahty  of  a  well-nucleated  marriage  of  minds. 
Their  quite  extraordinary  freedoms  of  discussion — 
freedoms,  too,  whose  setting  was  the  vibrant  atmosphere 
of  their  strong  mutual  attraction — can  have  been 
possible  only  in  virtue  of  that '  co-ordination  '  of  which 
Ford  spoke.  It  became,  I  know,  so  settled  a  habit  of 
thought  between  them  that  they  could  talk  of  one 
thing  in  terms  of  another,  without  any  uttered  arrange- 
ment or  definition  of  symbols,  not  vaguely  but  with 
the  simplest  lucidity  and  directness.  And  it  was  in  a 
glow  of  happiness  that  they  came  together  in  such  talk, 
rejoicing  in  the  electrical  leap  of  feeling  and  under- 
standing that  thrilled  every  interchange.  Their  happi- 
ness, indeed,  must  have  been  singularly  perfect  and 
poetic  at  times.  But  there  was  another  side  to  the 
picture.  Besides  their  frank  joy  in  ranging  the  wide 
expanse  of  thought  and  feeling  that  was  theirs  in 
common,  there  was  the  ever-recurrent  moment  of 
inevitable  trespass  into  the  region  of  their  ineluctable 
differences.  And  the  differences,  too,  had  their  co- 
ordination, their  sensitive  nucleus — but  sensitive  for 
pain,  not  for  joy.  The  keen  edge  of  mutual  insight 
had  to  cut  both  ways.  The  friendship  was  bi-nuclear, 
and    one    of    the    nuclei — hurt.      Nothing    could    be 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  89 

Ic'iughed  away  as  a  trivial  disagreement,  not  worth 
tioubling  about ;  at  the  dropping  of  a  pebble  the  whole 
flock  of  their  differences  rose,  darkening  the  sun. 

In  attempting  to  give  the  true  story  of  Ford's 
experience,  with  the  hope  of  eliciting  some  hint  of  its 
irfluence  upon  his  life  and  his  outlook,  I  ought  not  to 
shirk  the  analysis  of  certain  periods  of  black  agony 
through  which  he  passed.  I  feel  that  their  recognition 
is  vital  to  the  full  understanding  of  the  man.  But 
my  pen  hesitates  as  though  it  were  a  scalpel  held  in  an 
inexpert  hand  above  sentient  flesh.  No  one  can  know 
the  degree  of  suffering  that  underlay  that  difficult 
venture  along  an  untrodden  path.  The  heights  of 
spiritual  intimacy,  of  luminous  delight  beyond  words, 
h:d  a  splendour  of  which  Ford's  broken  gleams  of 
reminiscence  have  given  me  an  ever-memorable 
glimpse  ;  but  he  hid  the  depths  of  frustration,  the 
abyss  of  love  eager  and  denied,  the  tragedy  of  those  who 
can  lose  their  hearts  but  cannot  lose  their  heads.  Here 
I  must  respect  his  so  unusual  secretiveness.  The 
tn  gedy  can  be  expressed  very  fully  and  completely  in 
iewer  words  than  it  would  take  to  outline,  in  detail, 
its  lowest  tidemark.  Ford  and  Mary  Worthington 
lost  love  because  they  had  indulged  in  the  dream  of  a 
relition  beyond  the  compass  of  present  humanity — 
something  too  near  the  love  of  angels  to  be  approached 
wilhout  a  lamentable  singeing  of  mortal  wings.  But 
Ford  was  not  to  know  this  for  the  truth  until  several 
long  years  had  passed. 


90  W.  E.  FORD 

My  clearest  mental  picture  of  the  pair  at  this  time 
has  for  background  a  country  lane  that  winds  through 
cropped  hazel-groves  gleaming  freshly  with  the  sweet, 
virginal  colouring  of  spring  flowers — a  scene  that  Ford 
revisited  with  me  many  years  later,  *  scanning  its 
beauties  with  an  absent  gaze  '  that  told  of  a  vivid 
train  of  reawakened  memories.  He  gave  me  his 
memories,  in  an  odd,  dreamy  way,  as  though  he  were 
remembering  aloud,  that  evening  as  we  smoked  and 
watched  the  fading  afterglow  of  sunset  after  supper 
at  a  village  inn.  It  was  on  this  occasion  that  he  spoke 
most  feelingly  of  his  desire  that  it  were  possible,  some- 
how, so  to  set  out  the  story  of  his  bygone  experience 
that  a  few  others  might  know  and  understand.  A 
sense  of  beauties  past  and  foregone — inevitably  fore- 
gone, because  they  had  been  of  their  nature  uncaptur- 
able — had  hold  of  him  that  evening  ;  and  he  longed 
that  one  or  two  besides  himself  might  realise  not  the 
beauty  alone,  the  perilous  beauty  of  such  a  first  love 
as  his,  but  also  the  infinite  trouble,  the  unmanageable 
complex  of  mere  mortal  incertitude  and  worry  that 
comes  of  a  love-ideal  left  too  much  in  the  air,  a  love- 
story  in  which  hero  and  heroine  alike  are  at  the  mercy 
of  the  clouds  and  winds  that  are  appointed  to  make 
sport  of  those  who  choose  to  abandon  their  footing 
upon  solid  earth.^ 

It  was  a  romantically-minded  elder  married  sistei 

*  This  reference  of  Ford's,  which  I  have  endeavoured  to  para 
phrase,  was  to  Goethe's  poem  Grenzen  der  Menschheit. 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  91 

of  Mary's,  aided  and  abetted  by  a  husband  with 
hterary  interests  and  unconventional  views  of  pro- 
pri'ity  (I  can  touch  upon  their  unashamed  compHcity, 
now  that  Sir  Joshua  Worthington  has  gone  whither 
this  book  cannot  follow  him,  without  bringing  oppro- 
bri  im  upon  their  heads — and  they  must  forgive  me 
this  summary  specification  of  their  amiable  selves), 
wh<)  provided  opportunity  for  the  long  walks  and 
dis<:ussions  in  a  countryside  lit  by  spring.  Mary  came 
do\7n  from  London  and  stayed  with  them,  and  Ford 
had  rooms  near  by,  and  thence  the  two  carried  out 
whit  might  be  described  as  a  series  of  small  celibate 
elo])ements,  walking  expeditions  of  a  day,  two  days, 
thr;e  or  four  days.  The  sister,  trusting  Ford's  un- 
mistakable balance  and  Mary's  '  niceness,'  or  perhaps 
wit  1  an  instinctive  judgment  for  the  fact  that  they 
wcie  too  much  set  upon  a  fastidious  perfection  to 
snatch  at  the  improvident  moment,  feared  no  sudden 
sensuous  culmination,  though  she  longed  sympathetic- 
ally for  the  psychological  culmination  that  should 
decide  them  deliberately  to  marry  in  despite  of  obstacles. 
Hei  husband  encouraged  her  rather  to  welcome  than 
to  <lread  the  shght  risk  of  a  compromising  scandal ; 
he  .vas  frankly  impatient  for  developments,  and  told 
Fori  in  the  course  of  a  semi-avuncular  talk  that 
any  occurrence  capable  of  shaking  them  up  and 
inducing  them  to  get  a  move  on  would  meet  with 
his  highest  approval.  He  only  put  into  direct  and 
matter-of-fact  language  the  first  elements  of  an  idea 


92  W.  E.  FORD 

that  was  by  now  very  strongly  present  in  their  own 
minds. 

They  were  distressed,  and  perhaps  a  Httle  wearic^d 
in  spirit  over  the  failure  hitherto  of  their  long-continued 
effort  to  come  to  terms  ;  and  they  rejoiced  at  the 
developing  prospect  that  now  unfolded  itself  before 
them  of  a  freedom,  an  elbow-room  in  time  hitherto 
unattainable,  which  might  give  them  a  real  chance  of 
explaining  themselves  to  one  another,  of  achieving  at 
last  the  long-desiderated  fusion  of  their  poignant 
difficulties.  Long  days  in  the  clear,  crystalline  open 
air  of  spring ;  long,  open  talks,  and  long,  open  silenc(;s 
under  the  deepening  sky  that  seemed  to  enlarge  its 
vault  inimitably  for  the  reception  of  cosmic  confidences; 
long  twilights,  when  they  would  meet  to  watch  the 
brightening  of  stars  until  the  hour  arrived  for  them  to 
part  again  and  return  for  the  night  to  their  discreetly 
separate  lodgings  ;  it  all  seemed  to  promise  an  oppor- 
tunity, a  liberation  that  might  lead  to  anything  and 
everything.  The  opportunity  was  in  truth  magnificent; 
but  they  miscalculated  the  force  that  had  held  and 
was  bound  to  hold  them  apart.  Nature,  even  in 
spring,  could  not  heal  the  cleft  between  two  mine  s 
that  thought  oppositely  about  the  purposes  of  life. 

None  the  less  they  strove  unknowing  for  a  con - 
plete  reconciliation.  The  tide  of  spring's  impulse 
was  strong  in  them,  and  ever  and  again  they  woul;l 
struggle,  as  they  tramped  and  talked,  for  the  cor- 
summation  of  thought  and  feeling  that  should  mal^c; 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  93 

everything  clear  in  a  strife  so  keen  as  to  be  literally 
exhausting.  But  each  time  their  castle,  half  built  in 
the  lir,  would  collapse  ;  their  mental  individualities 
would  fall  back  from  one  another,  retracted,  resentful, 
host  le,  while  their  talk  took  refuge  in  an  atmosphere 
of  h:  If-humorous  mutual  condolence. 

Their  problem  changed  its  footing  with  the  admission 
of  fcilure  that  worked  its  way  at  last  into  the  place 
of  cc  mmand.  Before,  the  question  had  been  whether 
they  could  not  go  the  whole  way  together,  from  a 
uniq  le  friendship  to  as  unique  a  passion  ;  now  they 
had  heir  answer,  for  the  time  at  least,  and  were  faced 
by  .1  new  uncertainty.  There  they  were ;  their 
relation  was  none  the  less  in  being  for  its  failure  of 
becoming ;  and  its  being,  its  apparent  state  of 
permanent  suspension,  refused  to  be  translated  into  a 
matter  for  quiet  acceptance.  It  was  a  perpetual  ache. 
They  decided  to  part  for  a  time,  to  *  break  off  the  non- 
enga-^'ement,'  as  Ford  put  it,  and  go  their  separate  ways 
in  sei.rch,  perhaps  of  enlightenment,  at  any  rate  of  the 
peac(  of  mind  that  they  could  never  achieve  together. 

M3  real  intimacy  with  Ford  began  shortly  after 
this  decision  had  been  ratified.  I  had  just  left  school, 
and  was  to  travel  for  six  months  before  going  to 
Oxfo :d ;  Ford  had  already  determined  to  leave 
Buckley's,  and  willingly  accepted  the  post  of  my 
cicerone,  offered  at  so  opportune  a  moment. 

I  Inew  nothing  of  Mary  Worthington  at  this  time, 
nor  did  I  know,  what  I  was  later  to  learn,  that  Ford, 


94  W.  E.  FORD 

at  thirty-two,  had  come  to  a  point  in  Hfe  at  which  lie 
was  heavily  assailed  by  a  sense  of  failure  and  of 
personal  meaninglessness.  He  had  done  nothing, 
he  felt,  achieved  nothing ;  his  personahty  was  in 
vacuo.  He  had  moods  of  horrible  depression  when  lie 
saw  himself  as  a  hollow  and  purposeless  thing  in  a 
world  of  mocking  unrealities.  Yet  at  this  very  time 
he  stood  to  me  for  all  that  was  strong  and  hopeful  and 
vital  in  thought.  If  I  could  have  read  his  inner 
questionings  then,  I  should  have  been  as  much  amaz(;d 
as  though  I  had  seen  him  turn  into  some  one  else 
before  my  eyes.  It  must  have  been  that  as  he  fought 
out  his  own  battle  against  pessimism,  he  imparted  ~o 
me  the  gains  of  every  local  success  and,  for  the  main 
issue,  radiated  the  courage  that  was  determined  to 
fight  its  way  out  of  darkness,  not  the  tense  anxiety 
and  disquiet  which  made  that  courage  necessary. 


CHAPTER  VI 

Our  plan  was  to  go  to  Teneriffe  for  January  and 
Fel)ruary  of  1903,  perhaps  visiting  one  or  two  other 
of  he  Canaries  in  the  course  of  our  stay  ;  then  to  get 
sorie  kind  of  a  boat  to  take  us  to  Cape  Juby  on  the 
West  African  mainland,  and  to  work  our  way  in 
leisarely  style  around  and  eastwards  along  North 
Africa ;  and  then,  crossing  the  Mediterranean  to 
Sicly,  to  travel  northwards  through  Italy  as  gradually 
as  the  rise  of  the  season's  temperature  might  allow, 
finally  crossing  the  Maloja  Pass  into  the  Engadine, 
to  -ry  our  hands  at  climbing  (it  is  his  hands  that  the 
no\ice  uses),  and  to  enjoy  that  climax  of  the  Alpine 
fiov/ers  that  comes  just  before  midsummer.  It  was 
a  p  etty  scheme,  but  circumstance  and  our  own  choice 
weie  to  find  us  an  even  better  one. 

\/e  spent  a  fortnight  in  Teneriffe,  of  which  the  first 
ten  days  devoted  themselves,  belatedly,  we  were  told, 
to  showing  us  what  sub-tropicsJ  rain  can  do.  When 
we  were  not  sleeping,  eating,  or  going  for  walks  of 
conscience  under  a  steady  vertical  pelt  that  was  like 
an  English  thimder-shower  of  the  heaviest,  not  only 
doubled  in  volume  but  indefinitely  prolonged,  we  sat 
in  a  cool  verandah  bordering  the  open  i>atio  of  our  hotel 

95 


96  W.  E.  FORD 

and  read  and  talked  discursively.  I  think,  looking 
back  upon  those  days,  that  we  both  were  quietly 
revelling  in  a  sense  of  release  and  relaxation.  For 
me,  the  change  from  the  exigencies  of  school  was 
celestial.  I  read  FitzGerald's  Omar  Khayyam  for  the 
first  time,  and  Ford  grinned  with  appreciative  sympathy 
over  my  raptures.  The  very  rain,  a  nuisance  from  the 
sight-seeing  tourist's  point  of  view,  seemed  to  me  a 
blessed  dispensation  that  gave  elbow-room  to  long- 
starved  thoughts  and  emotions.  Also,  it  stood  to  me 
for  the  washing  away  of  many  useless  accretions, 
knobby  and  semi-vitrified,  that  I  had  brought  out 
with  me  as  part  of  the  inevitable  impedimenta  of  the 
pubUc  schoolboy.  I  was  to  learn  later  on  that  Ford 
was  as  glad  of  that  perpetual  downpour  as  I  was, 
and  also  for  his  own  personal  reason.  It  seemed  to  him 
to  dissolve  the  haunting  trouble  that  so  persistently 
besieged  his  mind,  the  trouble  of  his  broken  relations 
with  Mary  Worthington,  and  to  symboUse  in  che 
rushing  cascades  and  the  ever-rising  torrents  to  which 
it  gave  birth  the  sweeping  away  of  the  inevitable 
sorrow  of  frustrated  love,  the  washing  clean  of  a  new 
world  that  awaited  the  interpretation  of  an  observer 
newly  cleansed  in  spirit. 

Teneriffe  was  indeed,  when  the  rain  stopped,  a  new 
world.  We  crossed  the  island  on  foot,  and  rejoi  ::ed 
over  the  world-famous  view  from  Humboldt's  Correr  ; 
and  we  climbed  the  Peak  from  Villa  Orotava,  wl.ere 
(to  mingle  small  things  with  great)  Ford  had  a  re- 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  97 

calcitrant  tooth  stopped  by  a  Spanish  dentist,  and 
returned  wishing  the  dentist  had  been  left-handed, 
since  his  left  hand  had  smelt  of  garlic  alone,  while  his 
right  hand,  which  he  chiefly  employed,  smelt  not  only 
of  gadic  but  of  bad  cigars  as  well.  The  Peak  of 
Teneiiffe  has  the  habit  of  spreading  out  an  umbrella 
of  clcud,  during  a  few  hours  from  midday  onwards, 
along  the  plane  of  a  ridge  that  encircles,  craterwise, 
its  to])most  cone  ;  and  as  we  ate  our  sandwiches  upon 
the  svmmit — itself  a  smallish  crater,  of  which  we  had 
perch(  d  ourselves  upon  the  highest  tooth  in  its  serra- 
tion— the  dazzling  cloud-canopy  grew  and  solidified 
in  whiteness  some  three  thousand  feet  below  us,  until 
we  mi^  ht  have  been  sitting  islanded  upon  that  brownish- 
black  sugarloaf  of  lava  rock,  surrounded  by  a  sea  of 
which  the  cloud-stratum  merged  almost  imperceptibly, 
at  its  tenuous  edges,  into  the  actual  ocean  ten  thousand 
feet  below  it.  *  Well,'  said  Ford,  *  here  we  are  out  of 
the  wc  rid  at  last ! '  and  his  words  had  a  ring  that  I 
can  inierpret  now  as  the  expression  of  his  first  sense 
of  full  escape  since  '  the  world  '  had  laid  hold  upon 
liim.  Then,  I  only  registered  his  remark  (such  was 
my  egc'ism)  as  a  sympathetic  recognition  of  my  own 
sense  o  a  new  and  a  magnificently  picturesque  freedom 
from  scholastic  ties. 

We  were  not  to  stay  long  in  Teneriffe.  The  day 
after  o  ir  return  from  Orotava  to  Santa  Cruz,  Ford 
came  into  conflict  with  a  Spaniard  whom  he  found 
beating  a  small  girl  in  a  by-street.    There  was  a  tussle, 

G 


98  W.  E.  FORD 

and  the  man  drew  a  knife,  which  Ford  at  length  suc- 
ceeded in  wrenching  from  him  and  throwing  awa}' ; 
this  accomphshed,  he  let  his  sufficiently  bruised  and 
dejected  adversary  go.  I  think  that  this  contemptuous 
clemency,  even  more  than  a  rankhng  sense  of  defeat, 
roused  the  revenge-obsession  that  proved  to  have  tskcn 
hold  upon  the  bully,  who  made  such  a  nuisance  of 
himself  in  the  character  of  a  lurking  peril,  that  we 
decided  to  go  elsewhere  rather  than  be  bothered  either 
with  the  incessant  watchfulness  that  became  the  price 
of  Ford's  continued  existence  unstabbed  (there  were 
two  rather  comically  abortive  attempts)  or  with  the 
imknown  complications  and  delays  of  the  Santa 
Cruz  equivalent  for  police-court  procedure  that  would 
have  been  necessary  to  bring  the  offender  to  bock. 
Also,  Ford  was  far  from  defending  his  intervention  in 
the  first  instance,  claiming  that  he  had  interfered 
solely  through  the  workings  of  an  obscure  British 
instinct  on  behalf  of  a  child  who  quite  possibly,  accord- 
ing to  Santa  Cruz  standards,  had  dared  and  merited 
her  punishment  by  some  too  effective  chain  of  Canaiy- 
Spanish  insults.  *  I  dare  say  he  's  just  as  right  in 
wanting  to  knife  me  as  I  was  in  punching  his  jaw,' 
said  Ford  as  he  summed  up  the  case  ;  and  in  leaving 
Santa  Cruz  he  left  any  final  judgment  of  the  main 
issue  not  to  go  by  default,  but  to  resolve  itself  in  te:  ms 
of  relative  values. 

We  had  intended  in  any  case  to  see  some  of  the  liss- 
visited  islands  of  the  group,  and  after  a  visit  to  Fuerte- 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  99 

Ventura  and  Lanzarote,  interesting  to  us  scientifically 
but  unproductive  of  biographical  incident,  we  found 
ourselves  at  Palma,^  and  in  an  environment  that  was 
lite  ally  to  open  up  a  new  chapter  of  existence  for  Ford. 
It  :s  my  business  to  suppress  detail  that  would  be 
appropriate  only  in  a  book  of  travels,  and  I  am  trying 
to  look  back  upon  the  peacefully  crowded  months  of 
our  subjection  to  the  spell  of  this  fortunate  island  with 
a  view  to  selecting  the  pictures  and  the  incidents  that 
best  typify  the  side  of  Ford  and  of  Ford's  later  outlook 
whi'  :h  was  then  in  the  making ;  and,  as  a  rule  for  my 
gen(  ral  guidance,  I  am  relying  upon  the  plan  of  giving 
chie  f  place  to  the  things  that  Ford  in  his  later  maturity 
chicly  remembered  in  conversation,  or  referred  to  in 
the  midst  of  a  discussion  for  illustration  of  the  argu- 
ment that  he  wished  to  put  forward. 

By  this  criterion  our  first  view  of  the  possibihties  of 
Palria,  both  scenic  and,  as  it  afterwards  proved, 
soci(  logical,  certainly  calls  for  an  attempt  at  de- 
scription. We  had  climbed  on  mule-back,  for  endless 
hours  it  seemed,  to  the  crest  of  the  pass  that  provides 
diflicult  communication — a  mere  foot-track — between 
the  side  of  the  island  that  faces  East  and  trades  through 
Tcneriffe  with  Europe,  and  the  side  that  faces  West  and 
trade  s  largely  with  Cuba.  We  did  not  then  know  that 
the  west-looking  side  was  in  this  sense  nearer  to  lands 

•  NDt  to  be  confused  with  Las  Palmas,  an  island  as  tourist- 
ridder  as  Teneriflfe ;  still  less,  of  course,  with  the  town  that  is  the 
capital  of  Majorca. 


100  W.  E.  FORD 

distant  by  the  breadth  of  the  Atlantic  than  to  the 
Palma  of  the  eastern  slopes,  and  it  was  with  an  impulse 
of  aesthetic  rather  than  geographical  exaggeration  thr.t 
Ford  exclaimed  as  we  topped  the  ridge,  *  I  say  1  This 
is  another  universe,  you  know  !  ' 

A  glory  of  sunset  colouring  bathed  in  gold  the  grey 
and  brown  weathering  of  the  volcanic  crags  whose 
tumbled  masses  formed  the  first  precipitous  slop>e 
beneath  us.  A  few  hundred  feet  down  began  a  belt 
of  the  magnificent  Canary  pines,  dwindling  from  the 
nearest  monarch,  visibly  gigantic,  to  a  distant  featheri- 
ness  of  dark  green  shot  with  the  red-gold  of  sunlit 
stems  and  branches,  beyond  which  the  single  giants 
that  had  strayed  from  the  belt  a  little  way  into  the 
shelving  plain  below  might  have  been  the  tiniest  of 
dwarf  trees.  The  plain,  a  long  sweep  down  to  the 
coast,  was  sheeted  with  almond  blossom.  All  around, 
the  Atlantic  basked  and  gleamed  inimitably,  shading 
off  at  the  high,  indefinable  horizon  into  the  vibrating 
opalescence  of  the  sky's  margin,  an  opalescence  that 
cleared  into  deepening  blue  above,  and  warmed  throu^;h 
palest  yellow  to  full  orange  as  it  neared  the  sun. 

After  a  long  pause  to  take  in  the  marvel  of  it  aJl, 
and  to  watch  the  afterglow  creep  up,  richer  gold  thiin 
ever,  we  started  downwards,  deeply  moved,  scarcely 
heeding  the  feats  of  equilibrium  by  which  our  muliis 
negotiated  the  sudden  turns  and  drops  of  the  rocijy 
path.  (We  had  soon  learnt  that  they  knew  best  he  w 
to  pick  their  way,  wisely  disregarding  any  inexpert 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  loi 

attt^mpt  at  guidance.)  I  remember  questioning  whether 
Pal  ma  could  possibly  live  up  to  the  fii-st  impression 
tha :  it  had  given  us.  Ford  turned  to  our  muleteer  with 
a  re  mark  in  his  fluent  Spanish  upon  the  beauty  of  the 
island.  The  man  replied  with  a  grave  smile  that  it 
was  '  quiet,'  ^  but  that  here  men  were  happy.  *  I  can 
beh  ;ve  it,'  said  Ford  to  him,  and  '  that  sounds  good 
enough  ! '  to  me. 

The  dusk  came  up  and  met  us  as  we  entered  the 
pine -belt,  and  the  sound  of  shod  hoofs  upon  bare  rock 
was  quieted  by  a  carpeting  of  pine-needles,  and  pre- 
sently out  of  the  darkening  silence  we  were  overtaken 
by  1  ghts  and  voices,  and  a  party  of  women  carriers, 
basket  on  head,  came  swinging  bare-footed  down  the 
difficult  path  with  little  torches  of  resinous  pine- 
sphnters  in  their  hands.  Erect  and  supple,  warm- 
skinned  and  clear-eyed,  they  made  a  very  gracious 
picture  in  the  flickering  glow  that  spaced  them  out 
agaiiist  the  dusky  forest  as  our  party  halted  to  greet 
them  and  to  take  light  from  them  for  torches  of  our 
own.  Ford  fell  into  talk  with  them  and  the  muleteer 
as  w(  went  on  together,  still,  I  think,  following  up  our 
half-uttered  train  of  thought  about  a  place  that  should 
unite  with  its  beauty  of  aspect  a  correlative  beauty  of 
human  character.  I  missed  the  greater  part  of  the 
talk  (my  Spanish  was  stiU  in  the  elementary  stage)  ; 

*  I  .'hould  translate  his  quieto  as  'peaceful,'  if  it  were  not  for 
the  pe\o  ('but')  that  succeeded  it.  It  is  thus  that  we  in  the 
countr '  use  the  word  *  quiet '  to  warn  the  urban  visitor  not  to 
expect  variety^entertainmcnts. 


102  W.  E.  FORD 

but  I  could  hear  at  least  the  open  frankness  of  their 
tones,  and  when  at  length  the  women  took  a  by-path, 
calling  out  good-nights.  Ford  drew  to  my  side  radiant 
with  enthusiasm.  '  That 's  the  sort  of  person  to  be  I  ' 
was  his  exordium,  and  he  went  on  to  dwell  upon  the 
blessings  of  the  unsophisticated  life.  Doubtless  these 
jolly  people  had  their  own  sophistications  (they  had  : 
we  were  yet  to  see  the  ladies  of  Palma  on  a  Sunday, 
their  figures  constrained  into  black  dresses  of  a  parodif  d 
European  cut,  their  natural  tan  obliterated  with  rice- 
powder)  ;  but  these  things  could  be  nothing  to  the 
fundamental  genuineness  of  their  lives.  They  looked 
at  you  and  spoke  to  you  like  children,  but  like  wise, 
mature  children,  and  with  an  instinctive,  unconscious 
poetry  of  gesture  and  utterance.  They  were  humanity 
with  its  feet  on  the  real  earth.  *  We  're  going  to  learn 
a  lot  in  this  place,'  Ford  summed  it  up.  I  felt  sceptical 
— I  also  felt  tired,  for  we  had  been  thirty-six  hours 
awake — and  inclined  to  refer  his  enthusiasm  to  a 
purely  aesthetic  cause  ;  but  he  had  simply  made  a 
jump  to  the  truth,  as  was  his  way.  The  people  of 
Palma  were  uniquely  natural ;  though  when  I  wc  ke 
the  next  morning  in  the  primitive  inn  that  we  had 
made  our  pied-d,-terre  to  find  a  dozen  of  them  in  my 
bedroom  admiring  and  discussing  such  clothes  ai  I 
had  unpacked  and  scattered  overnight,  my  eighten- 
year-old  prudery  was  disposed  to  think  that  natui  il- 
ness  could  be  carried  too  far.  But  Ford,  looking  in,  ^  ^  as 
delighted  with  the  incident,  and  expounded  my  waid- 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  103 

rob^  to  my  callers  with  great  freshness  and  zest  before 
th^y  withdrew,  pohtely  wishing  us  good  morning. 

From  the  little  inn  at  El  Paso  we  began  to  make 
exploration  of  Western  Palma.  The  island  consists 
of  the  inner  and  the  outer  slopes  of  a  very  large,  long- 
ex  tinct  volcano,^  and  we  had  come  to  it  chiefly  in 
order  to  follow  up  von  Buch's  theory  of  volcanic 
origins — a  fine  piece  of  large-scale  objective  work  that 
F(  rd  had  planned  for  the  widening  of  my  scientific 
horizon  ;  but  he  now  postponed  the  study  of  the  crater, 
which  was  to  have  been  our  first  objective,  for  the  sake 
of  the  more  vital  education  that  we  should  acquire 
tofjether  (as  he  put  it)  by  looking  into  the  nature  of  a 
human  society  that  promised  something  like  a  revelation 
of  human  values. 

We  talked  with  our  stalwart  innkeeper,  a  mine  of 
information  and  of  wise  commentary  upon  local 
affiirs,  always  keen  to  exchange  with  us  details  and 
asj)ects  of  our  respective  civilisations  (he  decided  in 
th(-  end,  when  Ford  had  overcome  the  reluctance  of  his 

*  Geography  of  Palma. — Cut  a  pear  in  half  and  put  one  half  upon 
a  p  ate  with  the  cut  surface  downwards  and  the  stalk  end  pointing 
sou  th.  At  the  top  scoop  out  a  conical  hole  nearly  as  deep  as  the 
thi(  kness  of  the  half-pear  and  a  little  wider  than  half  the  pear's 
bre  idth.  On  the  south-western  side  cut  a  ravine  that  allows  the 
jui(e  to  drain  from  the  bottom  of  the  hole  on  to  the  plate.  The 
hoi !  represents  the  crater  of  Palma,  broken  down  on  its  south- 
weft  side,  and  the  juice  the  river  that  flows  through  the  break  to 
the  sea ;  and  if  you  carved  the  rest  of  the  half  pear  into  ridges  and 
mil  or  ravines,  leaving  a  steep  main  ridge  from  the  crater  to  the 
southernmost  point,  you  would  have  a  very  fair  rough  representa- 
tio  1  of  the  island  in  exaggerated  relief. 


104  W.  E.  FORD 

courtesy,  that  he  preferred  his  own — though  he  con- 
fessed to  a  child-Uke  longing  to  see  a  railway  train  or 
a  motor  car,  modem  miracles,  to  him,  of  equal  in- 
credibility) ;  we  talked  with  a  marvellously  vrinkled 
old  woman  who  wove  silk,  pure  cocoon  silk  of  the  rarest 
quality,  upon  a  hand-loom  generations  older  than 
herself,  and  she  told  us  much — but  not  her  opinion  of 
machine-looms,  for  she  persisted  in  regarding  them  as 
an  imaginative  joke  of  Ford's  ;  we  talked  with  a 
grizzled  goatherd  among  the  crags  who,  when  fairly 
launched  upon  a  description  of  the  ways  of  goats  that 
had  all  the  quality  of  a  Georgic,  broke  off  at  sight  of 
Ford's  intent  face  to  turn  to  me,  with  a  wave  of  his 
hand  towards  Ford,  and  utter  the  single  word  *  Her- 
moso ! '  1  in  a  tone  as  heartfelt  as  it  was  unaffected 
(I  admired  the  equally  frank  composure  with  which 
Ford  received  and  put  aside  the  high  compliment), 
before  the  narrative  about  his  goats  resumed  its  course. 
We  made  one  open  and  friendly  acquaintanceship 
after  another  around  the  countryside,  and  more  than 
confirmed  our  muleteer's  opinion.  Here,  indeed,  men 
could  be  very  happy.  I  asked  Ford  what  he  thought 
was  the  matter  with  them  all.  '  Well,  to  begin  with,' 
he  said,  *  there  are  no  poor  here — and  no  rich.' 

We  went  in  search  of  rich  folk,  and  tramped  down 
through  banana  groves  to  Tazacorte,  the  coast  town 

*  Untranslatable;  but,  roughly,  something  between  our  words 
' handsome '  and  'beautiful.'  The  derivation  from  Hermes  gives 
the  best  clue  to  a  further  meaning. 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  105 

wh(3re  we  were  told  that  wealthy  merchants  lived. 
Th(y  had  heard  from  afar,  by  the  immemorial  wireless 
conimmiication  of  the  Canary  people — a  whistling 
code  that  seems  to  have  attained  an  extraordinary 
per.ection  of  expressiveness — that  the  notorious 
En^;Ush  visitors  were  coming,  and  we  descended  the 
steep  chimney  of  a  by-street,  to  find  a  black-coated 
deputation  awaiting  us,  courtly  and  amicable,  in  the 
market  square.  Apparently  they  had  been  at  pains  to 
discover,  from  some  linguist  among  them,  the  correct 
Enghsh  salutation  ;  the  phrase  was  not  exactly  right, 
but  they  bowed  and  said  '  Good-bye  '  with  an  intona- 
tion which  reassured  us  that  it  was  welcome,  not 
prompt  valediction,  that  they  intended.  They  con- 
tended for  the  privilege  of  entertaining  the  strangers, 
and  the  victor  regaled  us  with  a  luncheon  of  remarkable 
hbc]  ality  and  interest,  and  brought  out  for  the  occasion 
a  bcttle  of  Canary  wine  that  had  a  venerable  delicacy 
of  :lavour.  Here,  unmistakably,  was  our  typical 
rich  man  of  Palma  ;  and  the  task  of  drawing  him  out 
was  no  test  of  Ford's  skill  in  this  direction.  He  took 
a  simple-minded  pleasure  in  laying  bare  to  us  all  the 
schenes  and  subtleties  of  a  captain  of  industry  ;  and 
then  he  took  us  round  his  estate  and  his  fruit-packing 
shed^  to  show  us  his  work  and  his  workers  in  the  con- 
crete. We  inspected  critically  and  exhaustively,  as 
thou  ^h  our  kindly  host  had  been  our  bitterest  enemy. 

When  we  got  home  Ford  declared  that  his  search 
for  any  sign  of  unhappiness  or  discontent  in  western 


io6  W.  E.  FORD 

Palma  was  at  an  end.  It  was  time,  he  said,  for  iis 
to  go  about  our  geological  business,  investigate  the 
crater,  and  try  meanwhile  to  digest  the  incompre- 
hensible phenomenon  presented  by  an  entirely  happy 
race  of  people. 

Our  landlord  took  into  his  own  hands  the  arrang<3- 
ments  for  our  camp  in  the  Caldera,^  and  found  out 
through  that  extraordinary  facility  of  communication 
by  word  of  mouth  which  always  astonishes  the  travellter 
in  regions  where  no  other  communication  exists  (in 
this  case,  surely,  the  Canary  code  of  whistling  signals 
could  not  have  been  employed)  that  we  should  be 
welcome  to  the  use  of  certain  eligible  caves,  sometim(is 
tenanted  by  goatherds,  which  opened  upon  a  large 
and  a  not  too  accessible  ledge  below  the  steepest  of 
the  crater-wall,  within  reach  of  a  spring.  Here  he 
proposed  to  send  us  a  mule  daily  (it  would  be  the  best 
part  of  a  day's  journey  there  and  back)  with  fresh  milk 
and  provisions.  A  friendly  altercation  arose  between 
him  and  Ford  over  this  plan.  We  were  paying  ten 
pesetas  a  day  (about  7s.)  for  taking  up  the  whole  :)f 
the  small  accommodation  of  the  inn  ;  and  we  had  found 
that  Don  Antonio's  idea  of  an  inclusive  charge  pio 
cluded  our  offering  a  halfpenny  for  any  extra  require- 
ments— even  for  the  handsome  brass  candlesticks 
that  he  bought  for  us  when  we  wanted  more  light  of 

^  Crater.  I  detest  a  description  of  travel  that  is  peppered  w:  i  h 
avoidable  foreign  terms,  but  I  must  be  allowed  this  word  (wh  ch 
we  always  used  for  the  wonderful  place)  if  only  for  its  caden:e. 
The  accent  falls,  of  course,  upon  the  long  e. 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  107 

an  evening — without  grieving  him  deeply.  Now  he 
maintained  with  the  tenacity  of  a  Shylock  that  the 
cor.tract  must  still  hold  good.  Mule-hire,  the  only 
exi)ensive  necessity  in  the  island  (for  mules  have  to 
be  imported)  would  come  to  7J  pesetas  a  day  ;  and 
on  the  remainder  he  claimed  the  right  to  furnish  us 
with  camp  equipments  and  provisions,  also  keeping 
our  rooms  inviolate  till  our  return.  All  Ford's  resources 
of  dialectic  were  in  vain  ;  Don  Antonio  stood  there  on 
his  bond.  We  could  only  determine  to  take  it  out  of 
hin  when  the  time  came  to  make  him  a  parting  present. 
We  had  thought  of  the  Caldera  as  a  geological  object- 
lesson  ;  we  found  it  a  wonderland.  As  we  rode  up  the 
great  sinuous  ravine  that  leads  to  it  the  crags  towered 
higher  and  higher,  till  as  we  roimded  the  final  bend 
their  steep  slopes  parted,  scissor- wise,  to  reveal  the 
distant  ridge  of  the  enormous  bowl.  Then  we  turned 
to  mount  the  left-hand  slope  of  the  ravine  by  a  wind- 
ing path  that  denied  a  further  view,  till  at  long  last 
we  came  out  upon  a  ledge  in  the  Caldera  itself,  some 
fivt!  thousand  feet  up.  The  encircling  rim,  nine  miles 
across,  was  another  two  thousand  feet  above,  and  the 
dark  cliffs  rose  to  it  ever  more  precipitously  ;  below 
us  sloped  less  steeply  a  vast  ridged  amphitheatre  of 
pir>e  forest  that  broke  into  green  valleys  far  below. 
Th ;  sun  was  nearing  the  western  cliff -edge  that  almost 
overhung  us  as  we  wound  along  the  track,  and  when 
at  length  we  had  unloaded  and,  the  mules  dismissed, 
had  made  our  simple  preparations  for  the  evening,  the 


io8  W.  E.  FORD  ^HS 

crater  was  filled  with  the  luminous  golden  haze  tMt 
heralded  the  sunset.  The  atmospheric  colour  deepened 
and  brightened  till  the  cliffs  at  the  furthest  edge  might 
have  been  carved  out  of  new,  shimmering  bronze. 
Suddenly,  deep  violet  shadow  struck  the  forest  depths 
below  us,  and  spread  down,  down  to  the  bottom  and 
then  slowly  up  the  further  side,  engulfing  the  gold  in 
mystery.  At  last  the  distant,  burnished  ridge  stood 
out  alone  beneath  a  sky  of  vibrating  blue,  and  above 
a  cavernous  hemisphere  of  purple  twilight ;  and  we 
watched  the  still-ascending  shadow  till  the  last  peak 
(it  shone  like  a  planet)  had  been  swallowed  up,  and  the 
Caldera  lay  in  a  dream  of  grey  dusk  beneath  the  dome 
of  sapphire  that  deepened  overhead. 

Our  human  needs  of  supper  and  the  warmth  of  a 
camp  fire  seemed  petty,  as  Ford  remarked,  after  so 
stupendous  a  sight,  and  the  ruddy  blaze  of  our  fire  and 
its  glow  upon  neighbouring  rocks  and  tree-trunks, 
disturbing  a  thousand  flickering  shadows,  suggested 
a  tremulous  attempt  in  miniature  to  emulate  the  glory 
that  we  had  seen.  It  was  natural  that  Ford's  talk 
should  tend,  as  he  put  it,  towards  a  justification  oi 
man's  doings  in  the  face  of  Nature,  and,  more  particu- 
larly, towards  an  effort  for  comprehension  of  oui 
Palma  friends'  innate  happiness.  '  Happiness  is  qui 
first  justification  for  living,'  I  remember  that  he 
premised,  '  if  it  isn't  our  last.' 

I  must  paraphrase  Ford,  if  I  am  to  attempt  a 
rendering  of  his  thesis  that  evening,  as  closely  as  m> 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  109 

memory  will  serve  me  after  a  thirteen  years'  interval. 
*  L^t  's  suppose  something,'  he  said  (this  was  always 
a  lavourite  gambit  of  his),  *  and  see  how  it  works.' 
Hi^  supposition  was  that  natural  beauty  works  upon 
the  mind  of  man,  when  nothing  is  present  to  pull  the 
mind  out  of  harmony  with  it,  like  a  kind  of  moral 
magnetism,  continually  and  imperceptibly  drawing 
thought  and  action  into  kinship  with  itself.  To  my 
commonplace  query  whether  people  bom  and  brought 
up  in  surroundings  of  the  most  inspiring  beauty  did 
not  grow  up  insensitive  to  them  through  sheer  habitua- 
tion, he  answered,  *  Let 's  suppose  that  they  appreciate 
the  n  imconsciously,  just  as  a  man  who  has  always  been 
tru  hful  and  brave,  let  us  say,  goes  on  caring  for 
tru^  h  and  is  continually  showing  courage  in  its  defence 
witjiout  a  moment's  consciousness  that  he  's  doing 
anything  out  of  the  way.  Now  then — take  the  saying, 
'  It  is  more  blessed  to  give  than  to  receive.*  That 
isn'L  morals,  it 's  aesthetics.  We  all  understand  it  to 
mern  that  it 's  finer — it 's  more  beautiful.  And  here 
we  liave  these  people  who  have  got  a  sense  of  beauty — 
so  ve  're  supposing — and  they  carry  it  out,  simply  and 
nati  irally.  They  prefer  Give  to  Get  as  a  matter  of  taste. 
Well,  Give  happens  to  be  a  very  much  better  working 
phil)sophy  of  life,  when  every  one  carries  it  out  at 
onc(  as  they  do  ;  and  the  result  is  sound  economics 
and  general  contentment.  And  contented  people 
can  spare  an  eye  for  the  beautiful — and  there  we  are 
back  at  the  beginning  of  the  circle.' 


no  W.  E.  FORD 

I  set  him  off  again  by  bringing  to  light  a  doubt  that 
had  been  underlying  my  own  appreciation  of  the 
delightful  Palma  temperament.  They  surely  could 
not  be  in  any  way  progressive  ;  one  could  not  see 
them  mounting  to  any  higher  level  of  mind,  or  pro- 
ducing a  literature  or  an  art ;  they  seemed  fated  to 
go  round  and  round  in  the  circle  of  which  he  had  spoken, 
happy,  but  always  on  the  same  unaltering  plane  cf 
happiness.  Nine-tenths  of  them,  for  instance,  were 
illiterate  and  seemed  likely  to  remain  so.  Ford  agreed 
that  happiness  in  a  closed  circle  was  a  vain  thing,  and 
then  lit  up  with  a  new  idea — I  paraphrase  him  again  : 
'  The  circle 's  only  a  foundation,  a  basis.  These  people 
have  got  the  right  basis  of  happiness.  But  you  can't 
see  the  fun  of  it  unless  it 's  a  basis  they  can  build  upon 
to  raise  themselves.  Well,  look  here ;  suppose  the 
circle  is  really  a  spiral — at  each  circuit  they  find 
themselves  a  bit  higher  up  than  before.  If  so,  it 's  a 
spiral  that  must  rise  jolly  slowly,  I  grant  you.  But 
what  are  the  things  that  twist  people's  circle  of  happi- 
ness upwards  ?  Your  mind  jumps  to  literature  and 
art  as  the  visible  signs  of  a  rise  in  the  scale,  with  readin,^ 
and  writing  for  a  first  beginning.  Education's  tte 
force  that  sets  the  spiral  mounting  at  a  respectable 
angle;  but  education's  no  earthly  use  until  you^3 
got  a  sound  circle  of  happiness  to  start  from.  When 
your  life  just  zig-zags  about  aimlessly  from  one  dis- 
content into  another,  it 's  no  particular  fun  to  ha^  e 
education  twisting  you  up  and  letting  you  down  agai:  i . 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  iii 

Th  it 's  what  happens  to  us  civilised  Europeans,  for 
the  most  part ;  we  've  got  the  education,  of  a  kind, 
bu-  not  the  sound  basis  of  Hfe  for  it  to  work  from. 
Th3se  people  have  got  the  basis,  but  not  the  education.* 
]  asked  him  what  he  meant  by  education,  and  he 
ga^'c  me  a  definition  that  impressed  me  enough  to 
make  me  write  it  down  afterwards.  '  One  generation 
takes  pains  to  shape  its  experience  into  a  ladder  by 
which  the  next  can  chmb — that's  all.'  And  he  went 
on  to  abandon  his  metaphor  of  a  spiral  of  progress  for 
a  f  gure  in  which  each  generation  made  its  own  circle 
of  happiness  and  achievement,  and  raised  from  it 
ladders  by  which  the  next  could  climb  to  another  and 
a  liigher  circle.  The  resulting  structure  we  call  a 
civilisation ;  and  when  either  the  base  is  faulty  or 
the  successive  circles  become  increasingly  distorted, 
the  civilisation  topples.  The  civilisation  of  the 
Atlienians  depended  upon  slavery  ;  that  was  the  fatal 
kink  in  their  basic  *  circle  of  happiness.'  Roman 
civ  lisation,  better  based  (Ford  intensely  admired  the 
car  y  Romans),  became  twisted  out  of  recognition 
whon  Rome  became  a  parasite  upon  conquered  pro- 
vin:es.  European  civilisation  .  .  .  well,  Europe  had 
a  ^ood  deal  to  learn  from  places  like  Palma  and 
Palestine  before  it  could  consider  itself  in  any  way 
saf<".  Palma  was  a  working  model,  not  of  human 
life  at  its  highest  and  finest,  but  of  humanity  upon  a 
sou  ad  primary  basis.  On  this  partial  conclusion  we 
let  the  problem  rest,  and  turned  to  the  question  of 


112  W.  E.  FORD 

bed-making  upon  a  basis  of  hay  left  by  the  goatherds 
in  our  caves.  The  hay  proved  a  dehciously  aromatic 
mattress,  and  the  stars  in  the  night  sky  at  the  cave's 
mouth  were  magnificent,  though  we  should  not  hav3 
watched  them  for  so  long  if  that  hay  had  been  less  full 
of  entomological  interest.  Ford  declared,  next  morn- 
ing, that  fleas  had  formed  a  complete  circle  of  happiness 
around  his  waist — of  course  upon  the  debased,  para- 
sitic level  of  Get,  not  Give. 

The  projected  geological  work  claimed  our  days, 
and  we  studied  the  Caldera  with  fair  thoroughness, 
clambering,  hammering,  measuring,  calculating  ;  and 
it  was  only  at  intervals,  and,  as  he  liked  to  put  it,  for 
fim,  that  Ford  recurred  to  the  simple  main  principl(; 
which  had  emerged  of  its  own  accord  from  his  suppler 
handling  of  our  discussion.  It  has  always  seemed  to 
me  fundamental,  as  the  groundwork  of  any  philosophj' 
of  life  whether  for  the  individual  or  for  a  society. 
Happiness,  for  any  creature  above  the  level  of  pulex 
irritans,  is  found,  ultimately,  only  in  giving  ;  and  real 
giving  is  possible  only  to  those  who  possess  happiness, 
since  in  the  last  analysis  happiness  is  the  only  gift 
that  there  is.  This  Ford  called  a  *  virtuous  circle.' 
I  remember  wondering,  naively  enough,  why  so  clea 
and  simple  a  first  principle  had  not  become  translated 
by  now  into  universal  human  practice.  Ford,  smilini; 
at  the  colossal  dimensions  of  the  question,  gave  as  a 
grain  of  explanation  that  a  virtuous  circle  was  alway ; 
mistrusted  and  decried — 'sour  grapes,  you  know' — 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  113 

by  people  who  couldn't  see  their  own  way  into  it. 
I  recall  from  another  talk,  following  upon  the  arrival 
of  Dur  mule-boy  with  a  mail  that  brought  disquieting 
news  from  home,  that  a  misgiving  of  mine  rose  to 
ex]  session  whether  Ford  were  not  giving  to  happiness 
toe  basic  a  position  in  human  life  as  it  has  to  be  lived. 
I  had  been  taught  to  attach  a  certain  dignity  to 
suf  ering  ;  and  there  was  the  question  of  the  stimulus 
of  1  inhappiness — the  phrase  '  divine  discontent  *  lurked 
somewhere  at  the  back  of  my  mind.  Ford  jumped  at 
once,  not  to  a  modification  but  to  an  extension  of  his 
theds.  Discontent  is  good  when  it  is  the  straining 
out  after  a  happiness  that  can  be  seen  but  cannot  yet 
be  reached,  and  the  standard  of  this  high  discontent 
is  laised  upon  the  standard  of  happiness  that  has 
preceded  it.  Discontent  without  the  underlying  belief 
in  joy  is  stagnant,  a  breeder  of  diseases.  And  the 
dignity  of  suffering  depends  upon  its  being  borne 
witli  joy,  or  with  the  grim  variant  of  joy  that  is 
call'id  fortitude.  It  is  the  pre-existing  standard 
and  quality  of  happiness  that  determines  the  dignity. 
There  is  no  beauty  in  suffering  itself,  but  only  in 
the  human  spirit  that  is  too  great  to  be  submerged 
by  it. 

I  am  setting  down  very  clumsily  the  few  things  that 
I  caa  recall  with  any  clearness  of  Ford's  philosophising 
as  \fe  roamed  the  Caldera,  or  talked  in  the  twilight 
after  the  daily  miracle — it  never  grew  less  miraculous — 
of  tlie  Caldera  sunset.    I  miss  his  freshness  of  simile 

H 


114  W.  E.  FORD 


q 


and  illustration  ;  and  I  can  never  hope  to  make  words' 
express  the  way  in  which  his  face  would  light  up  with 
the  development  of  an  idea,  the  radiation  that  came 
from  him  of  pure  joy  in  an  intellectucd  quest.  The 
equality  in  which  he  let  me  stand  to  him  was  a  con- 
tinual marvel.  He  made  nothing  of  the  immaturity 
of  an  opinion  or  a  criticism,  and  never  dreamed  c-f 
using  his  skill  to  make  a  mere  debating  point  in  favour 
of  his  argument  at  the  moment.  With  a  theory  in  the 
full  flood  of  exposition  he  would  pause  to  take  up  an 
objection  due  as  much  to  slowness  of  wit  as  to  the 
sight  of  any  flaw  in  his  statement,  and  would  examine 
and  reinterpret  it  with  all  his  power  of  sympathetic 
imderstanding,  finally  working  it,  transformed,  into 
the  structure  of  his  own  thesis.  He  gave  me  a  most 
inspiring  sense  that  I  really  participated  in  and 
brought  material  to  the  building.  It  is  when  I  come 
to  reconstruct  that  I  find  out  how  far  he  was  beyond 
me  all  the  time. 

One  day  we  took  a  holiday  from  volcanic  origins  an  d 
went  down  through  the  pine-belt  and  the  lower  ravin<  s 
to  the  bottom  of  the  Caldera.  We  could  see  from  oi  r 
ledge  that  there  was  a  house  down  by  the  stream — 
the  tiniest  of  dolls'  houses  it  looked — and  we  had  sec  n 
human  specks  crawling  about  the  green  slopes  aroui  d 
it ;  and  the  many  fig-trees  around  the  spot,  bare  )f 
leaves  at  this  season,  and  each  a  tangle  of  grey  branch  :;s 
that  looked  from  so  far  above  like  a  small,  fixed  puff 
of  pale  blue  smoke,  told  of  deliberate  planting.     \»'e 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  115 

inferred  a  farmstead,  and  took  no  food  with  us.  A 
Ioniser  descent  than  we  had  looked  for,  lengthened  by 
the  necessity  of  climbing  again  and  again  out  of  one 
rav:ne  that  persistently  led  us  off  our  line  and  into 
another  that  repeated  the  misguiding,  brought  us 
swc'tering  and  famished  to  the  door  of  the  farmhouse 
weL  on  into  the  afternoon.  Our  knocking  brought  out 
a  ci  umple-faced  old  woman,  octogenarian  at  least,  but 
of  lemarkable  sprightliness.  She  knew  all  about  us, 
and  was  full  of  regrets  that  we  had  not  sent  warning 
of  (  ur  distinguished  visit — our  mule-boy  could  have 
passed  on  the  word,  she  said.  As  it  was,  the  young 
folk  were  out  at  work,  beyond  call,  and  alas  !  she  had 
no  Ileal  to  offer  that  the  Senores  could  touch.  Ford 
expl  lined  that  we  were  in  a  condition  to  touch  any- 
thing eatable,  and  she  brought  out  amid  a  shower  of 
apobgies,  diversified  by  gleams  of  laughter  over  the 
thought  of  the  Seiiores  eating  anything  so  plebeian, 
gofio,  which  is  maize-meal,  half-malted,  and  dried  figs 
— ^htde  black,  knobby  things,  satisfyingly  resistent  to 
the  hungry  jaw.  Gofio  puzzled  us — we  had  each  our 
little  heap  of  the  brownish,  coarse  flour.  Our  hostess 
instr  icted  us  to  eat  it,  dry  with  fingers  and  thumb. 
Now  the  native  eats  gofio  in  small  pinches  at  a  time, 
and  or  a  sufficient  reason  ;  the  stuff  turns  glutinous 
in  the  mouth,  absorbing  moisture  with  the  avidity  of 
quictlime,  and  a  small  teaspoonful  taxes  one's  salivary 
glands  to  the  utmost.  Ford  and  I  hungrily  took 
sizeal)le  mouthfuls  and  were  bereft  of  speech  for  many 


ii6  W.  E.  FORD  ^HS 

minutes,  while  the  old  lady  crowed  with  merrimenOt 
our  industrious  mouthings. 

'  Lord,  that 's  a  tiring  food  !  '  gasped  Ford,  when  at 
length  he  was  able  to  gasp  again.  My  response  was 
interrupted  by  an  uncontrollable  peal  of  laughter  from 
the  old  lady.  It  was  the  first  time  she  had  heard  a 
foreign  language,  and  it  struck  her  as  the  funniest 
thing  in  the  world.  Ford  realised  that  this  was  the 
reason  of  her  mirth,  and  only  made  it  worse  by  explain- 
ing the  fact,  still  in  English,  to  me.  *  But  I  don't 
imderstand !  I  don't  understand ! '  the  old  lady 
protested,  and  went  off  into  fresh  peals  of  laughtei. 
When  she  had  recovered  a  little  we  began,  by  way  of 
homoeopathic  treatment,  to  give  her  single  words  for 
things.  '  Plate,'  we  said,  pointing.  *  Fig.'  *  Hat.' 
It  was  no  use.  The  only  answer  was '  Yo  no  comprende ! ' 
and  another  peal.  She  found  it  so  glorious  a  joke 
that  we  made  no  further  attempt  to  spoil  it  by 
elucidation. 

Having  disposed  of  the  rest  of  owxgofio — it  is  excellent 
stuff  when  you  go  the  right  way  to  work  with  it — and 
munched  our  figs,  we  evoked  the  Comic  Spirit  again  by 
wanting  to  pay  for  our  entertainment.  '  Money  ! 
For  gofito  ! '  1  Really,  her  glance  seemed  to  say,  tl  e 
famed  Senores  Ingleses  were  proving  the  most  comic  1 
of  people  !  Her  eyes  still  twinkled  with  amusement 
as  we  said  good-bye.     Ford  was  delighted  with  the 

*  '  A  little  gofio.'  The  Canary  people  carry  the  Spanish  love  Jor 
the  diminutive  ^-ito  '  to  any  extreme. 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  117 

whole  incident,  and  declared  that  the  old  woman's 
laughter  was  shaking  down  and  settling  many  things  in 
his  mind.  It  was  ridiculous  to  go  about  tendering 
bit.^  of  money  for  the  small  human  services  that  are 
far  sweeter  if  they  are  left  as  gifts.  *  It  isn't  paying, 
it 's  tipping,'  he  said  ;  and  went  on  to  speak  of  tips 
as  part  of  the  machinery  that  bolsters  up  our  sham 
sup  iriorities.  Other  people  in  Palma  had  obviously 
thought  us  mannerless  for  certain  offers  of  money, 
and  we  had  wondered  where  they  drew  the  dividing 
line  beyond  which  payment  became  an  offence ;  Ford 
saw  now  that  they  draw  it  where  payment  took  on  the 
nature  of  a  tip.     Free  people  don't  tip  one  another. 

And  difference  of  language,  when  you  came  to  think 
of  it,  was  funny  enough  for  anything.  We  could  not 
see  the  joke  of  it  with  the  perfect  freshness  of  mind 
that  the  old  woman  had  brought  to  bear,  but  we  could 
see  the  same  joke  on  a  smaller  scale  when  two  people 
of  the  same  tongue  but  of  different  thought  fell  into 
a  di.  cussion — it  was  the  stock  humorous  resource  of 
writ(  rs  of  light  comedy.  A  great  part  of  the  comedy 
of  lif  ^  as  of  its  tragedy,  came  of  mutual  cross-purposes, 
and  only  humour  prevented  these  from  being  all 
tragedy.  Suppose,  now,  that  we  had  known  no 
Spanish,  and  had  failed  to  make  the  old  woman  under- 
stanc  that  we  were  hungry  !  She  would  have  had  a 
monc  poly  of  the  humorous  view  of  the  situation.  Ford 
went  on  whimsically  to  reconstruct  a  lost  chapter  in  the 
story  of  the  Tower  of  Babel :   when  the  confusion  of 


ii8  W.  E.  FORD 

tongues  began,  half  the  builders  grew  hot  and  angry 
about  it  and  threw  bricks  at  one  another,  while  th«3 
other  half  were  too  weak  with  laughter  to  get  on  with 
the  work.  And  humanity  consists  of  the  descendants 
of  those  two  groups — by  now  somewhat  intermixed, 
though  the  pure  strain  emerges  now  and  then. 

Seeing  him  in  such  a  mood  for  the  drawing  of  morals 
I  demanded  an  interpretation  of  gofio.  There  was  no 
difficulty  about  that.  Gofio,  obviously,  was  the 
analogue  of  information — facts — the  kind  of  stuff  they 
teach  you  at  school.  A  pinch  at  a  time  that  one  could 
moisten  and  masticate  was  good  and  nutritious ; 
ladled  out  by  the  spoonful  it  was  dust  and  ashes  in  the 
mouth.  This,  of  course,  led  to  a  discussion  of  education 
that  lasted  until  long  after  we  had  got  back  to  our 
cave-home.  But  I  am  reserving  the  attempt  to  reprc>- 
duce  Ford's  views  on  education  for  another  chapter. 

By  this  time  we  had  long  abandoned  our  plan  for  a 
spring  journey  through  North  Africa  and  Italy. 
At  first  we  had  thought  that  we  were  only  postponing 
this  phase  of  our  projected  tour  to  the  latest  reaso]i- 
able  date  ;  but  even  then  Palma  had  hold  of  us, 
and  soon  we  knew  that  we  should  be  wasting  something 
more  than  the  tourist's  opportunity  to  see,  and  after- 
wards to  say  that  he  has  seen,  an  interesting  diversi  y 
of  places,  if  we  failed  to  soak  in  as  much  of  Palma  :ls 
our  utmost  time-limit  would  allow.  When  we  return  :d 
in  April  to  El  Paso  and  to  Don  Antonio's  inn,  after  six 
weeks  in  the  Caldera,  it  was  to  stay  there  until  neaijy 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  119 

tho  end  of  May,  seeing  more  of  our  old  friends — *  old  ' 
to  us  in  our  character  of  returned  adventurers — reviving 
and  revising  earlier  impressions  and  testing  them  for 
fahe  tints  of  rose  now  that  the  first  blush  of  enthusiasm 
had  worn  off,  rather  than  breaking  fresh  ground.  El 
Paso  stood  every  test  that  we  could  apply.  It  was  a 
ve  y  dehghtful  place  to  come  back  to. 

vVhat  was  it,  in  brief,  that  Ford  '  soaked  in  '  during 
the  whole  of  this  time  ?  The  central  impression  of  the 
pk  ce  and  its  people  seems  to  me  as  definite  as  the 
mc  aning  of  a  movement  in  a  Beethoven  symphony,  and 
as  indefinable.  There  was  a  unique  harmony  between 
na'  ural  beauty  and  fundamental  human  values.  .  .  . 

I  think  the  formula  that  Ford  threw  off,  that  first 
ev(  ning  in  the  Caldera,  is  as  explanatory  as  any  that 
car:  be  conveyed  in  words.  He  had  seen  human  life 
re\olving  in  its  natural  orbit.  He  had  reaUsed  the 
fuL  circle,  the  perfect  round  of  which  only  the  broken 
arcs — arcs  of  a  larger  circle,  however,  which  has  yet  to 
find  its  completion — are  to  be  found  in  the  complex 
civ  lisation  of  Europe.  He  had  seen  happiness  as  a 
norm  of  man's  existence,  and  he  had  seen,  springing 
froi  n  the  soil  of  happiness,  '  the  deep  desire  to  give 
anci  give  again '  that  shows  most  nobly,  it  is  true,  as 
a  c  laracter  of  the  troubled  spirit,  but  only  when  that 
spiiit  has  made  happiness  its  inner  foundation.  He 
brought  from  Palma  a  certain  tranquillity  that  was 
proof  against  many  of  the  doubts  and  despairs  by  which 
we  ire  beset.    Always  deeply  concerned  for  humanity, 


120  W.  E.  FORD 

he  never  found  his  ideahsm  disappointed  into  a  doubt 
of  human  potentiahties.  He  had  known  a  reahty  that 
gave  a  permanent  foundation  to  the  ideal,  and  it  made 
him  fearless  in  facing  realities  that  seemed  to  contra- 
dict the  ideal.  And  with  a  firm  footing  upon  this 
reality  he  was  to  reach  upward  and  grasp  a  conception 
of  individual  life  that  made  him  a  force  among  those 
with  whom  and  for  whom  he  worked,  and  an  enigma 
to  those  whom  he  passed  upon  his  way.  From  his 
time  in  Palma  onwards  Ford  was  his  own  man. 


CHAPTER  VII 

Nc  THING  could  have  been  in  more  acute  contrast  with 
Ford's  deep  impression  of  Palma  than  his  next  experi- 
ence of  a  human  society — the  '  society,'  in  the  shallower 
serse  of  the  word,  of  a  big  cosmopolitan  hotel,  the 
centre  of  a  fashionable  resort  in  Switzerland.  We 
caiie  to  St.  Moritz  by  the  quickest  route — via  London 
— c  rriving  in  the  first  week  of  June,  a  month  before  the 
first  assembling  of  the  folk  whose  holiday  movements 
are  recorded  in  public  print ;  for  a  full  month  the 
wonders  of  a  Swiss  midsummer  were  our  chief  concern  ; 
but  this  period  seemed  in  later  perspective  to  have  been 
only  a  preparation — the  setting  of  majestic  scenery  for 
the  entrance  of  characters  absurdly  incongruous. 

Our  first  friend  at  St.  Moritz,  Wieland  the  guide, 
a  great  brown  bear  of  a  man  with  the  instincts  of  a 
child,  was  another  matter.  We  identified  him  directly 
we  had  him  among  his  mountains  as  a  true  Swiss 
exponent  of  the  Palma  spirit.  Ford  was  delighted 
with  a  remark  of  his  when  we  were  on  the  way  to  our 
firsi  real  climb — the  Piz  Julier.  Starting  at  three  in  the 
morning  we  had  driven,  half  asleep,  some  distance  up 
the  road  that  skirts  the  southern  slopes  of  the  mountain 
on   ts  way  to  the  Julier  Pass.    Ford  and  I  dozed  on 

121 


122  W.  E.  FORD 

the  back  seat  of  the  aged  landau.  Wieland,  massively 
huddled  upon  the  seat  facing  us,  with  his  back  to  th(; 
driver,  suddenly  stretched  himself,  yawned,  and  pointed 
to  the  distance  behind  us.  '  Kommt  die  stolzie  ^ 
Bemina  heraus,'  he  observed.  We  looked  back.  The; 
Engadine  valley  lay  in  blue-grey  twilight  that  bright- 
ened to  the  clear  azure  of  piled-up  snow-peaks  beyond 
against  a  deep  ultramarine  sky  still  twinkling  with 
stars.  The  summit  of  the  *  proud  Bemina  '  had  just 
caught  the  first  shaft  of  the  rising  sun,  and  stood  out 
in  clear,  full  rose-pink  of  wonderful  purity.  The  un- 
conscious poetry  of  Wieland's  phrase  exactly  described 
the  mountain's  rose-crowned  dignity.     Incedit  vera  dea. 

Afterwards,  as  we  talked.  Ford  asserted  Wieland's 
absolute  human  superiority,  upon  his  own  ground, 
to  any  of  the  climbers  whom  he  escorted.  He  was 
their  minister,  and  a  minister  who  knew  the  mysteries 
that  he  served.  All  the  members  of  the  Alpine  Club 
put  together  could  not  have  mustered  the  three-o'clock- 
in-the-moming  courage  to  utter,  if  they  could  have 
thought  of  it,  a  phrase  about  a  mountain's  soul  that  he 
threw  off  between  a  yawn  and  a  chuckle.  He  wai; 
there ;  his  clients  were  ephemeral.  The  very  fac': 
that  he  was  there,  incidentally,  to  risk  his  life  for  then, 
if  they  got  into  difficulties  made  his  superiority  finally 
impregnable.  He  would  do  it  with  such  magnificen; 
imconcem — for  its  own  sake  rather  than  for  theirs. 
He  would  save  a  life  (it  was  not  he  who  told  us  that  h«; 

^  I  must  render  the  pretty  Swiss  variant  of  the  German  final  e. 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  123 

had  saved  three  on  one  occasion,  at  the  expense  of  a 
permanent  rope-mark  round  his  waist)  as  he  would 
salite  the  proud  Bemina,  without  the  compHcated 
trouble  that  we  call  a  motive. 

'  I  say,'  Ford  suddenly  interrupted  himself,  *  isn't  a 
cor  scions  motive  always  the  result  of  a  mental  conflict  ? ' 
He  mused,  staring  as  though  he  had  stumbled  upon  a 
sig  lificant  train  of  thought.  (We  were  resting,  after 
a  cay's  climb  with  Wieland,  on  a  terrace  that  looked 
do\vn  upon  the  St.  Moritz  Lake.)  Then  he  went  on  to 
argue  that  a  conscious  motive  must  always  be  an 
im])erfect  motive,  an  impulse  not  assured  enough  to 
do  without  deliberate  justification ;  not  the  less 
valaable  for  that,  but,  from  the  very  fact  of  its  being 
corscious,  a  mere  crude  approximation,  a  stepping- 
stone,  to  the  true  motivation  that  is  unconscious 
('  iiispired,'  Ford  put  it)  and  gets  things  done  purely  for 
their  own  sake,  or  for  the  sake  of  the  spiritual  need  that 
is  fulfilled  in  the  doing. 

This  is  to  summarise  very  briefly  the  gist  of  a 
rambling  talk,  the  talk  in  which  a  man,  physically 
tired,  lets  his  mind  and  his  tongue  run  on  as  they  will, 
wit  lout  any  such  '  conscious  motive  '  as  Ford  was 
hinself,  as  he  talked,  beginning  to  analyse.  Perhaps  he 
analysed  the  better — the  more  intuitively — for  the 
tiredness  that  gave  him  full  excuse  for  letting  his 
thought  roam  at  ease  ;  I  remember  a  sense  that  subtle 
undercurrents  of  meaning  flowed  unregarded  beneath 
the  surface  of  his  discursive,  casual  statement,  and  I 


124  W.  E.  FORD 

have  since  recalled  that  half-hour  again  and  again  to 
explain  a  side  of  Ford's  outlook  and  of  his  char- 
acter which  left  many  people  bewildered.  He  wa.s 
to  form  decisions  and  to  act  upon  them  with  such 
*  magnificent  unconcern  ' — to  borrow  the  phrase  that 
he  himself  used  of  Wieland's  matter-of-fact  heroism. 
But  it  was  later  on  that  this  element  in  his  nature^ 
manifested  itself ;  that  conversation  seemed  at  the 
moment  isolated,  the  curious,  irrelevant,  vital  offshoot 
of  an  active  brain  half-bemused  by  the  fatigue  of  his 
quiescent  body. 

Philosophy,  climbing  (with  a  sub-interest  in  glacial 
action),  and  a  delight  that  was  not  exclusively  botanical 
in  the  June  efflorescence  of  the  Alps  were  the  chief 
features  of  the  tutorial  scheme  that  Ford  had  in  mind 
for  my  time  in  Switzerland.  The  end  of  June  was  to 
have  been  the  end  of  my  six  months  abroad,  but  when 
the  final  week  drew  near  I  wrote  home  to  beg  for  an 
extension  and  was  granted  two  months'  further  leave. 
I  have  often  felt  irrationally  glad  that  I  thus  forwarded, 
unknowingly,  a  train  of  circumstance  which  put  a 
great  work  and  a  great  happiness  within  Ford's  reach. 
If  he  had  left  Switzerland  in  June  he  would  have 
been  most  unlikely  ever  to  have  met  the  Wisharts. 

The  July  irruption  of  tourists  drawn  from  the  most 
fashionable  strata  filled  us  with  despair.  We  thought 
at  first  of  flight  and  of  concealing  the  disgrace  of  oui 
quiet  tastes  in  humbler  surroundings,  but  Ford's  final 
verdict — again  fateful — was  that  we  had  better  see  it 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  125 

through.  We  were  out  for  realities  ;  in  Palma  we  had 
sec  a  one  kind  of  social  reality,  and  at  St.  Moritz  we 
had  the  opportunity  to  see  another  kind,  at  the 
opposite  extreme.  Artificiality,  he  maintained,  must 
be  coimted  among  the  realities  if  you  are  taking 
civ  Used  people  into  the  reckoning. 

1  here  were  people  who  did  little  but  play  golf,  where 
the  flowers  had  been  mown  away  to  make  a  course, 
under  the  gaze  of  the  snow-peaks  ;  there  were  people 
wht )  danced  by  night  and  talked  the  scandal  of  Euro- 
pea  n  capitals  by  day ;  there  were  people  who  talked 
Art,  read  poetry,  and  played  upon  the  excellent  grand 
piano  in  the  hotel  drawing-room  (one  elderly  Viennese 
lady  played  Beethoven  with  exactly  the  beauty  of 
tou-:h  and  phrasing  that  is  appropriate  to  the  lighter 
pas^ages  of  Mozart)  ;  there  were  people — these  we 
like  i  best — who  had  come  to  be  jolly,  and  were  jolly  ; 
but  there  was  no  one  who  fitted  the  Switzerland  that 
we  had  begim  to  realise.  And  as  Ford  said,  Why 
should  they  ?  None  of  them  belonged  to  Wieland's 
uni^  erse,  or  could  pass  through  it  seeing  with  Wieland's 
eyes,  for  the  single  reason  that  they  did  not  want  to  ; 
and  those  whose  attitude  frankly  confessed  their  lack 
of  d  isire  for  the  real  Switzerland  were  infinitely  better 
company  than  those  who  thought  it  incumbent  upon 
them  to  yearn  by  moonlight  or  to  gush  by  day  when- 
ever they  could  remember  to  do  so. 

Mr.  Wishart  came  to  us  one  day,  in  the  crowded 
dining-room  of  the  hotel,  like  a  breath  of  fresh  air. 


126  W.  E.  FORD 

There  was  no  table  vacant,  and  the  head  waiter  brought 
him  to  ours  with  the  audible  assurance  that  we  were 
pleasant  gentlemen.  He  explained  in  the  crisp  accent 
of  the  cultivated  Scotsman  that  he  had  walked  over 
from  Pontresina  to  prospect  for  further  easy  climbs, 
befitting  an  elderly  man,  with  the  idea  of  spending  a 
few  days  at  St.  Moritz  later  on  for  their  accomplishment. 
By  way  of  a  sample.  Ford  and  I  took  him  up  the  little 
Piz  Nair — a  mere  afternoon  stroll  that  gives  a  wonderfid 
view — and  as  we  mounted  the  easy  path  Ford  fell 
into  talk  with  him  at  once.  His  shrewd,  terse  openness 
had  taken  Ford's  fancy  from  the  start,  and  he  for  his 
part  fell  an  immediate  victim  to  Ford. 

As  we  came  down  again  he  invited  us  to  walk  back 
to  Pontresina  and  dine  with  him  en  famille,  and  we 
accepted.  The  family  proved  to  be  his  daughter 
Margaret  and  two  sons,  one  older  than  she  was,  the 
other — an  Edinburgh  imdergraduate — a  few  years 
younger.  Mr.  Wishart  had  been  a  widower  for  some 
years.  The  talk  at  dinner  consisted  chiefly  in  a 
relation  of  the  doings  of  the  trio  during  their  father's 
absence  ;  they  had  been  exploring  odd  comers  of  the 
Morteratsch  glacier,  and  the  eldest  son,  an  engineei', 
was  impressed  by  Ford's  knowledge  of  glacial  action, 
and  was  soon  bombarding  him  with  knotty  question -i. 
After  dinner  we  had  coffee  out  of  doors,  and  the  coji- 
versation  became  more  discursive  and  general.  I 
ought  to  be  able  to  record  some  small,  significant 
exchange  of  words,  or  at  least  the  passing  of  a  glan  :e 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  127 

the  t  lingered  on  its  way,  between  Ford  and  Margaret 
Wishart ;  but  I  was  immersed  with  her  younger 
brc  ther  in  Scottish  pubUc  school  shop — we  were  both 
Edinburgh  Academicals — and  had  no  premonition  of 
a  1:  iographer's  duty.  I  only  remember  that  Ford  and 
Mr  Wishart,  perhaps  catching  an  echo  of  our  gossip 
abc  ut  Academy  masters  and  boys,  began  a  discussion  of 
pul  lie  school  education  and  then  of  education  as  a 
whole.  Miss  Wishart,  I  think,  played  a  listening  part ; 
her  elder  brother,  not  greatly  interested,  presently  fell 
out  and  made  a  third  in  the  Edinburgh  talk.  But  the 
picture  of  Ford  and  the  two  Wisharts,  father  and 
daughter,  sitting  a  few  yards  from  us,  silhouetted  against 
the  hazy  distance  of  twilight,  has  remained  with  me 
as  s  omething  significant — no  doubt  in  virtue  of  events 
thai  were  to  follow. 

F  )rd  and  I  walked  back  to  St.  Moritz  in  the  moon- 
ligh  ,  charged  with  the  task  of  finding  a  week's  accom- 
mocation  there  for  the  Wishart  family.  Ford  became 
arti(  ulate  in  praise  of  Mr.  Wishart,  who  was  one  of  the 
rare  people,  he  said,  who  seem  really  to  know  what 
they  are  after — the  kind  of  man  to  see  instinctively 
wha .  is  worth  doing,  and,  having  seen,  to  do  it  as  a 
mati  er  of  course. 

Tl  ey  came  over  a  few  days  later,  to  a  pension  not 
far  f  om  our  hotel,  and  for  the  time  we  were  practically 
attached  to  their  party.  The  final  grouping  of  the 
even  Jig  at  Pontresina  tended  to  persist :  Mr.  Wishart 
could  not  see  too  much  of  Ford,  and  Miss  Wishart 


128  W.  E.  FORD 

accompanied  them  upon  the  unadventurous  chml)S* 
that  her  father  affected,  while  the  two  brothers,  both 
experienced  cHmbers,  very  kindly  took  me  under  their 
care  for  some  more  difficult  work.  I  am  afraid  my 
gratitude  was  not  so  whole-hearted  as  it  might  ha^-e 
been.  I  missed  my  Ford.  The  more  exciting  the 
expedition,  the  flatter  it  seemed  without  his  partici- 
pation and  his  commentary.  I  became  irrationally 
jealous,  not  of  Mr.  Wishart,  the  real  monopolist,  but 
of  his  daughter,  the  comparatively  passive  agent,  and 
looked  out  sulkily  for  signs  of  Ford's  preoccupation 
with  her,  or  hers  with  him.  I  must  confess  to  feeling 
a  sense  of  property  in  him.  After  all,  he  was  my  tutor. 
Ford,  meanwhile,  was  glad  that  I  should  climb  with 
men  who  really  knew  the  business,  and  in  the  evenings 
tried  to  draw  me  out  over  the  events  of  the  day,  puzzlcid 
no  doubt  by  the  taciturnity  of  my  unconfessed  resent- 
ment. Miss  Wishart  divined  the  reason  of  my  hufhsh- 
ness,  though  not  its  apprehensive  focus  upon  herself, 
and  tried  once  or  twice  to  thaw  me  by  talking  syin- 
pathetically  of  Ford  and  of  the  debt  that  I  must  owe 
to  him.  I  can  see,  now,  how  spontaneously  gracious 
was  the  attempt ;  but  the  perversity  of  a  jealous  mind 
could  see  nothing  in  her  overtures  but  a  prelimins  ry 
to  pumping  me  about  Ford,  and  the  appeal  of  her  quiet 
charm  was  distorted  into  a  subtle  form  of  attack  agai: :  st 
which  I  steeled  myself. 

It  was  with  an  unholy  joy  that  I  saw  the  fan^ily 
leave  at  last  for  home,  Mr.  Wishart  reaffirming  to  Ford 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  129 

a  cordial  invitation  (a  crowning  offence  !)  to  go  and 
stav  with  them  when  we  should  return.  My  tempera- 
meital  foolishness  did  not  long  outlast  their  departure, 
but  faded  through  a  slight  awkwardness — I  was  used 
to  ;  reedoms  of  self-revelations  with  Ford,  but  this  was 
beyond  my  eighteen-year-old  powers  of  confession — 
int( )  oblivion.  None  the  less  I  had  lost  my  chance  of 
rea  ising  the  first  vague  inception  of  an  educational 
sch  ^me  that  Ford  and  Mr.  Wishart  had  been  concocting, 
a  s  :heme  that  Mr.  Wishart's  practical  idealism  was 
aln  ady  half  prepared  to  set  in  motion  ;  for  Ford,  seeing 
thac  to  mention  the  name  of  Wishart  was  to  find  me 
ine::plicably  glum  and  unreceptive,  refrained  from 
talking  about  the  project  of  which  his  mind  must  then 
hav  3  been  very  full,  and  I  only  learnt  of  it  later,  when 
it  was  complete. 

The  fast-dwindling  remainder  of  our  time  of  travel 
was  tinged  with  a  slight  flavour  of  this  buried  awkward- 
ness ,  though  the  sullen  temper  that  had  been  its  cause 
had  evaporated.  In  any  case,  I  should  have  hated 
the  feeling  that  my  unique  monopoly  of  Ford's  mind 
was  drawing  daily  nearer  to  its  term  ;  and  the  Wishart 
incui^ion  had  pointed  the  grievance  by  exemplifying 
the  readiness  of  an  outside  world  to  claim  him.  Ford 
sens(  d  the  existence  of  the  hollow  that  was  forming 
in  me,  with  its  dull,  anticipatory  ache  that  kept  rising 
to  the  conscious  surface,  submerging  the  desire  to  make 
our  ]ast  days  the  jolliest  and  the  best  of  all ;  and  I 
was  grateful  that  no  convention  of  artificial  modesty 

I 


130  W.  E.  FORD 

made  him  do  me  the  m justice  of  pretending  that  the 
approaching  end  of  an  enjoyable  time  abroad  was  all 
my  trouble.  The  common  observance  of  professing 
oneself  impotent  to  evoke  love  had  no  meaning  for  him, 
though  I  beUeve  he  thought  all  the  less,  as  a  rule,  of  the 
impression  he  was  making  ;  he  concealed  no  vanity 
in  the  matter  because  he  had  none  to  conceal.  At  this 
time  he  met,  with  extraordinary  understanding  and 
lightness  of  touch,  my  shy,  clumsy  efforts  to  sho^v 
some  final  evidence  of  devotion,  my  eagerness  to  lose  no 
grain  of  meaning  in  the  least  thing  that  he  said.  He 
gave  me  the  only  real  solace  I  could  have  for  the 
growing  impendence  of  our  separation  by  accepting 
frankly  and  naturally  the  small  signs  of  affection  an^i 
indebtedness  that  I  tried  to  convey.  I  do  not  kno^v 
the  words  that  would  render  the  quaUty  of  that  serene:, 
undemonstrative  response,  but  its  quiet  spontaneity 
made  a  world's  difference. 

He  met  the  Wisharts,  I  believe,  soon  after  our 
return.  Events  that  have  no  bearing  upon  thes.e 
reminiscences  of  his  thoughts  and  doings  kept  me  alike 
from  an  Oxford  career  and  from  any  fuller  acquaint- 
ance with  his  movements  than  an  occasional  inter- 
change of  letters  could  supply ;  and  of  his  lette  s 
(I  did  not  keep  them)  I  recall  Httle  that  accounts  fc^r 
the  important  autumn  of  1903.  Its  importance  lis 
in  two  facts  that  I  learnt  from  him  later  on.  Mr. 
Wishart  made  a  definite  proposal  of  financing  a  school 
that  Ford  should  run  upon  his  own  lines  ;  and  my  od  :l, 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  131 

instinctive  apprehension  of  Miss  Wishart's  significance 
in  I  ord's  life  began  to  be  justified.  Jealousy,  like  other 
ata /istic  and  reprehensible  instincts  of  the  human 
mind,  sometimes  jumps  to  a  true  intuition.  The  two 
facts — I  draw  now  upon  my  later  knowledge — placed 
For  i  in  a  dilemma.  He  wanted  the  school  passionately ; 
the  opening  pointed  to  the  realisation  of  a  cherished 
dree  m  ;  and  he  viewed  the  attraction  that  was  growing 
with  a  fine  naturalness  between  himself  and  Miss 
Wis  lart  as  a  matter  of  high  privilege  and  promise  ;  but 
in  tiiis  he  could  not  feel  himself  a  free  man.  He  was 
bound  to  Mary  Worthington  by  a  subtle  code  of  honour 
in  uncertainty.  And  as  yet  she  had  not  responded 
to  tl  e  letter  that  had  announced  his  return  to  England. 
He  decided  that  there  was  nothing  for  it  but  to 
temi)orise  until  he  could  be  more  sure  of  his  bearings. 
At  the  least,  he  could  avoid  making  Miss  Wishart 
unheppy — ^he  already  saw  that  her  happiness  or  un- 
happ  iness  was  near  to  being  definitely  thrown  into  the 
scale  having  no  equipment  of  artificial  self-deprecation 
to  b  indfold  him  to  the  fact.  He  fell  back  upon  a 
suffic  ient  truth,  and  told  Mr.  Wishart  that  he  could  not 
take  on  the  management  of  a  school  until  he  had  dug 
more  deeply  than  hitherto  into  the  records  of  past 
educj  tional  work.  It  was  wholly  true  that  he  felt  a 
;  need  to  study  the  writings  and  the  experiences  of  men 
like  (  omenius,  Pestalozzi,  and  Froebel  before  embark- 
ing, as  they  did,  upon  an  individual  venture  in  educa- 
tion.   But  it  was  also  true  that  he  needed  to  get  away 


132  W.  E.  FORD 

and  breathe — and  wait.  I  do  not  know  in  what  temis 
he  told  Miss  Wishart  about  that  waiting,  but  there 
was  some  understanding  that  he  was  to  find  out  some- 
thing more  than  his  real  attitude  towards  education. 
For  Mr.  Wishart,  the  plan  for  a  school  was  in  abeyance 
until  the  following  autumn — the  autumn  of  1904 — 
but  by  then  the  school  was  to  be  started,  if,  by  then, 
Ford  should  find  himself  psychologically  equal  to  tlie 
task.  So  Ford  took  rooms  in  Bloomsbury,  and,  with 
a  reader's  ticket  for  the  library  of  the  British  Museum 
as  his  tahsman,  he  diligently  explored  the  life-stories 
of  great  educators  in  the  past  and — waited,  with  Ms 
own  life-story  in  the  balance. 

Mary  Worthington  wrote  from  her  married  sister's 
house  in  the  country,  and  Ford  went  down  to  see  her 
there.  They  found  all  their  old  lines  of  communication 
still  open  ;  Ford  recalled  to  himself  Browning's  wildly 
apt  metaphor  of  the  broken  stick, 

'  How  fresh  the  splinters  keep  and  fine — 
Only  a  touch  and  we  combine  ! ' 

And  of  splinters  in  the  more  palpable  sense  th(  re 
seemed  to  be  fewer  than  before  their  separation.  Thidr 
old,  deeply  underlying  difference  was  there,  as  much  as 
ever — probably  it  was  deeper  and  wider  than  ever; 
but  the  regard  that  they  turned  upon  it  had  mellow  d, 
somehow.  They  could  differ  without  mental  exacer  )a- 
tion.  Each  could  accept  the  other's  point  of  view  as 
an  inalienable  fact,  if  not  as  truth. 

It  is  a  moot  question  whether  it  is  possible  to  be 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  133 

'  in  love  '  with  two  people  at  the  same  moment.  But 
— tc  make  a  brief  digression,  for  clearness,  into  a 
region  of  abstract  personalities — when  A,  loving  B, 
meets  and  is  attracted  to  C,  there  must  be  at  least  a 
monentary  wavering  of  the  balance  before  it  tips 
decisively  in  one  direction  or  the  other.  Perhaps  it 
was  in  such  a  moment  that  Ford  met  Mary  Worthington 
again  ;  at  all  events  their  meeting  left  him  in  two 
min<ls,  and  he  could  not  be  sure  which  of  the  two  was 
veritably  his  own  mind.  The  elements  of  the  difficulty 
wen  hard  to  disentangle.  Mary  Worthington  was  his 
triec  friend,  his  partner  by  unspoken  compact  in  a 
relation  that  was  peculiarly  their  own,  a  relation  that 
must  inevitably  be  broken  if  he  gave  himself  whole- 
heaniedly  to  another.  *  I  'm  a  natural  monogamist, 
you  loiow,'  he  said  to  me  in  talking  of  this  time ;  I  had 
questioned  whether  a  true  marriage  could  not  co-exist 
with  a  unique  friendship  such  as  was  his  with  Mary 
Worthington,  and  he  was  explaining  for  my  benefit — 
I  was  in  some  need  of  his  experience  and  guidance — 
the  instinct  that  had  then  swayed  him,  as  he  had  since 
thouf;ht  it  out.  His  point  was  that  the  *  unique 
friendship,'  this  kind  of  intellectual-spiritual  relation, 
must  necessarily  be  at  war  with  the  marriage  relation, 
must  needs,  as  he  put  it,  '  break  the  full  circle  *  that 
the  riarriage  relation  has  to  establish.  The  married 
'  circle  of  happiness  '  cannot  be  complete  if  one  of  the 
parti<  s  has  to  fly  off  at  a  tangent  to  secure  an  essential 
spiritual  expression  and  satisfaction  outside. 


134  W.  E.  FORD 

Ford's  problem,  in  its  simplest  terms  and  as  con- 
cerning his  own  happiness  alone,  was  whether  he  could 
bear  to  leave  Mary  Worthington  and  all  that  their 
relation  had  meant  to  him,  and,  if  he  could,  whether 
he  would  then  be  able  to  bring  a  whole  personality 
full  and  unpartitioned,  to  Margaret  Wishart.  Bui 
the  problem  was  not  in  its  simplest  terms,  and  did  not 
concern  his  own  happiness  alone.  He  had  not  con- 
sciously determined  how  he  felt  towards  Miss  Wishart  ; 
in  escaping  for  the  time  out  of  the  influence  of  their 
growing  intimacy  he  had  acted  upon  a  hidden  impulse 
of  which  the  only  conscious  elucidation  was  his  desire; 
to  be  loyal  to  that  other  compact.  I  think  it  would  he 
true  to  say  that  in  the  first  development  of  his  friend- 
ship with  Miss  Wishart  he  had  seen,  like  a  distant 
light  that  may  or  may  not  be  the  light  of  home  windows , 
the  potentiality  of  a  complete  and  rounded  happiness  ; 
and  that  he  fled  precipitately  from  the  vision  lest  it 
should  draw  him  further  before  he  had  made  out 
clearly  whether  the  old  attachment  were  his  true 
home  or  only  the  guest-house  that  had  given  him  rar ; 
hospitality  by  the  way. 

It  was  not  solely  his  own  happiness  that  was  i:i 
question,  but  he  was  impelled  to  make  the  solution  c  i 
the  triple  complex,  so  far  as  his  own  action  was  cor - 
cemed,  solely  his  own  problem.  His  flight  from  Miss 
Wishart  had  been  to  save  her  peace  of  mind,  if  he;- 
underthought  should  have  begun  to  take  the  same; 
direction  as  his  own,  from  becoming  further  imperilled. 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  135 

He  had  waited  to  put  his  relation  with  Mary  Worthing- 
toiL  again  and  finally  to  the  test  on  its  own  ground, 
wiih  any  question  of  an  alternative  Miss  Wishart  left 
asile.  If  the  test  failed,  if  the  long-standing  barrier 
held,  and  he  and  Mary  Worthington  were  not  wholly 
for  one  another,  he  would  go  free — free  and  lonely, 
if  ;he  other  light  should  prove  to  have  been  only  a 
will-o'-the-wisp. 

1  have  spoken  of  Ford's  belief  in  the  reciprocity  of 
hu:nan  affection — his  conviction  that  that  part  of  an 
attachment  only  is  real  which  is  returned,  and  that  a 
on(  -sided  emotion  is  mere  mirage,  springing  from  the 
sell -deception  of  those  who  are  in  love  with  love,  and 
project  their  general  idea  to  enhalo  a  particular  person. 
I  see  every  reason  to  agree  with  Ford's  conviction 
that  but  for  this  belief,  which  he  and  Mary  Worthington 
shared,  they  would  have  married,  and  either  made  one 
another  exceedingly  unhappy  or  settled  down  to  the 
dull  truce  that  is  the  end  of  so  many  romantic-seeming 
unions.  Their  deep  psychical  attachment,  so  oddly 
lacldng  in  certain  essential  links,  ran  an  unusual  course  ; 
but  in  type  it  may  be  far  from  unusual.  How  many 
attachments  may  there  not  be  that  end  (end,  literally) 
in  marriage  ?  Ford's  experience  opens  up  a  wide  but 
an  obscure  field  of  thought.  As  civilisation  and  the 
life  of  the  mind  develop,  the  different  planes  of 
intimacy  upon  which  men  and  women  can  meet 
mu  tiply  endlessly.  Comparatively  few  of  these  hold 
out  promise  for  a  complete  union  of  lives  ;    but  the 


136  W.  E.  FORD 

primaeval  mate-seeking  instinct  snatches  at  sucli 
intimacies  to  impose  upon  them  its  single  interpreta- 
tion. Ford  and  Mary  Worthington  had  this  experience 
in  full  and  poignant  measure,  and  struggled  through  it, 
with  a  sort  of  blind  honesty,  to  the  only  true  conclusion. 
How  many,  in  like  case,  succumb  to  the  easy,  false 
conclusion  ? 

As  a  matter  of  psychological  clarity,  I  am  sorry  not 
to  know  exactly  how  it  was,  and  in  what  terms,  that 
the  two  reached  their  decision  that  they  were  not  for 
each  other ;  but  as  Ford's  friend  I  am  glad  that  th(i 
curtain  has  to  be  rung  down  before  the  concluding 
scene.  It  was  his  wish  that  his  experience  might  do 
something  to  elucidate  a  difficult  problem,  but  it  is 
right  that  the  laying  bare  of  that  experience  should  hi) 
qualified  by  a  certain  concluding  privacy.  He  and 
Mary  Worthington  talked  together  twice,  and  parted  ; 
and  that  ends — for  me,  upon  a  note  of  not  unwelcome' 
reticence — the  story  of  their  unique  association. 

Ford's  later  analysis  of  the  abstract  problem  remains . 
I  have  often  thought  over  that  notion  of  his,  that  therein 
are  on  the  one  hand  a  thousand  possible  intimacies 
between  man  and  woman,  the  product  of  recenl 
civilised  developments  of  thought  and  consciousness  ; 
and,  on  the  other  hand,  the  primordial  sex  instinc; 
always  ready  to  impose  its  own  egoism  and  to  tuni 
good  friendships  into  bad  love  affairs.  Ford  had  an 
idea  that  this  might  go  far  to  explain  the  imdue  pro- 
portion of  unhappy  or  unsatisfactory  marriages  tha; 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  137 

we  see  around  us.  What  might  be  the  right  issue  of 
these  intellectual  and  psychical  attractions,  he  could 
not  say.  They  ought  not  to  end  in  marriage,  if  the 
essential  something  else  were  not  present ;  they  could 
seldom  continue  indefinitely  upon  their  own  basis, 
except  on  condition  of  celibacy — and  then  discontent 
woi.ld  supervene.  Ford  could  only  leave  the  ultimate 
solution  to  the  future.  For  an  immediate  solution, 
he  s  aw  hope  in  the  gradual  growth  of  a  better  mutual 
understanding  between  the  sexes,  so  that  at  least  men 
and  women  were  coming  to  realise  more  clearly  and 
cone  ciously  where  they  stood  in  relation  to  one  another, 
and  to  realise  that  not  every  magnetism  spells  marriage. 

This  balm  of  philosophic  explanation  came  later  ; 
it  did  not  soothe  Ford's  present  hurt.  He  must  have 
suffixed,  and  suffered  for  a  time  excruciatingly,  under 
a  sense  of  intolerable  loss — the  loss  of  his  old,  un- 
real] sable  dream  and  of  the  realised  comradeship  that 
had  meant  so  much  to  him.  He  knew  it  was  a  com- 
radeship that  could  never  be  revived. 

Tlie  way  was  first  opened  for  me  to  hear  of  all  this 
long  episode,  so  vital  in  the  story  of  Ford's  experience, 
by  cne  of  those  queer,  untoward  accidents  that  often 
wind  up  an  actual  story  upon  a  note  of  anti-chmax. 
Six  months  after  Ford's  parting  with  Mary  Worthing- 
ton--when  (to  anticipate  a  httle)  the  arrangements  for 
his  s  :hool  were  in  full  train,  and  I,  to  my  delight,  had 
been  invited  to  come  and  take  part,  as  his  pupil  in  the 
art  of  education — I  heard  the  first  breath  of  a  malig- 


138  W.  E.  FORD 

nantly  garbled  scandal  that  had  been  set  afloat.  I 
infer  the  malignity  from  the  form  into  which  the  tak-, 
finally  disentangled  and  partially  run  to  earth,  ended 
by  resolving  itself.  The  story  that  first  roused  my 
indignant  incredulity  was  different  enough.  In  this., 
as  reported  to  my  family  by  a  friend  who  was  *  alarmed 
to  hear '  of  my  proposed  re-association  with  Fore, 
Mary  Worthington  had  actually  been  translated  into 
an  apocryphal  farmer's  daughter,  deflowered  by  Ford 
under  promise  of  marriage,  and  deserted.  This  was 
too  absurdly  out  of  character  for  even  a  momentary 
spasm  of  doubt,  and  I  carried  my  wrath  and  the  crazy 
legend  hot-foot  to  Ford,  to  know  what  he  could  make 
of  the  business.  As  an  incipient  headmaster  he  had 
of  course  everything  to  lose  if  such  a  rumour  had  i 
chance  of  spreading.  Ford  was  as  bewildered  as  ], 
and  inclined  merely  to  be  amused.  His  amusement 
changed  to  the  only  consuming  anger  that  I  ever  knew 
him  to  show  as  it  came  out  (I  will  not  dwell  upon  ths 
unsavoury  process  of  digging  and  sifting)  that  the 
original  lie,  before  it  underwent  the  comedy  of  change 
incident  to  underground  currency,  had  concerned  those 
last  two  interviews  at  the  house  of  Mary  Worthington  3 
sister.  It  was  an  instructive  study  in  the  ways  of 
Rumour.  One  friend,  more  loyal  than  wise,  had 
declared  that  Mary  had  been  '  badly  treated.'  (Mis  o 
Worthington,  I  beheve,  had  never  countenanced  any 
such  notion  on  her  own  behalf.)  Another,  a  victim  of 
the  hysterical  jealousy  that  it  is  kindest  to  consid<'r 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  139 

paihological,  had  seized  the  sHghtly  ambiguous  phrase 
and  built  upon  it,  knowing  nothing  of  Ford  except  his 
name,  an  imaginary  scandal  that  should  settle  Mary 
WcTthington's  reputation  once  and  for  all.  Thence 
the  story  proliferated  into  a  score  of  equally  delectable 
reincarnations.  In  several  it  was  not  Ford,  but  one 
ace  uaintance  or  another  of  the  Worthingtons'  who  was 
im])licated.  Ford  was  impelled,  however,  to  go  and 
thi  ish  the  whole  matter  out  with  Sir  Joshua  Worth- 
ing ton,  and  thus  at  length  to  get  to  the  bottom  of  it. 
Na:urally,  he  had  to  enter  upon  a  complex  of  ex- 
planations with  regard  to  past  innocent  secrecies  ; 
there  were  words,  but  the  two  ended  by  parting  upon 
res])ectful  if  scarcely  upon  cordial  terms.  Ford  did 
not  try  to  see  Mary  Worthington  again. 

The  one  small  seed  of  actuality  from  which  the 
ugly  absurdity  had  grown,  the  impression  that  Mary 
Worthington  had  in  fact  been  '  badly  treated,'  stuck 
in  i^ord's  mind.  *  They  really  did  think  I  had  been 
faithless  and  ruthless,'  he  said,  speaking  of  the 
Wo -thingtons'  attitude  towards  the  full  story  that 
had  now  been  told  of  the  friendship  and  its  termination. 
I  wis  angry  over  the  bare  idea  at  the  time,  but  it  is 
difficult,  on  reflection,  not  to  see  their  point  of  view. 

As  they  saw  it,  Ford  had  been  clandestinely  engaged 
to  Mary  Worthington,  or  semi-engaged,  which  was 
wor  ie  (they  never  came  near  to  understanding  what  the 
rare  relation  had  actually  been,  and  could  only  decide 
thai    any  alliance  so  perilously  intimate  that  went 


140  W.  E.  FORD 

unratified  by  even  a  secret  engagement  was  incom- 
prehensible to  the  verge  of  the  disreputable),  and  aftei* 
allowing  her  to  waste  her  freshest  years  in  thes(! 
intangible  fetters  had  sheered  off  irresponsibly  at  the 
moment  that  seemed  good  to  him.  His  apologia  was 
not  to  be  stated  in  terms  that  they  could  comprehend, 
but  he  did  his  best ;  and  they  seem  to  have  con- 
cluded that  he  was  genuine  but  incurably  wrong- 
headed.  Sir  Joshua  read  him  a  lecture  upon  the; 
heedless  selfishness  into  which  he  had  betrayed  himself. 
There  was  a  certain  inequitable  justice  in  the  in- 
dictment. Through  the  years  of  his  comradeship  with 
Mary  Worthington,  Ford  had  steadily  and  in  part 
consciously  disregarded  the  Worthington  standard. 
He  had  always  acted  simply  upon  his  instinctive 
conception  of  what  was  right  in  itself.  Such  a  mode  of 
life  has  its  drawbacks,  and  half  the  business  of  life  is  to 
determine  whether  these  drawbacks  are  worth  taking 
into  account.  Any  one  who  falls  into  the  habit  of 
Ustening  for  an  inner  voice  and  acting  in  accordanc(} 
with  its  promptings,  not  in  conformity  with  an 
accepted,  all-adequate  rule  of  thumb,  must  needs 
appear  selfish  at  times  to  those  who  are  out  of  the 
secret.  In  this  the  gentlest  seeker  for  sincerity  mus 
share  the  burden  of  Nietzsche's  trampling  superman. 

Ford's  school  came  into  being  in  the  autumn  o[ 
1904.  Mr.  Wishart  had  at  first  wanted  it  to  be  a 
boarding-school,  for  the  sake  of  keeping  Ford's  influ- 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  141 

en  :e  and  method  of  discipline  unbroken,  but  at  length 
he  came  round  to  Ford's  strong  opinion  in  favour  of  a 
dav  school.  I  was  asked  to  many  of  their  discussions, 
so  that  when  I  should  come  to  take  my  minor  share  in 
th(  work  I  might  be  well  grounded  in  the  substance  of 
th(  ir  conclusions  ;  and  I  remember  one  talk  in  par- 
tic  ilar  that  brought  out  Ford's  root  objection  to  the 
boitrding-school  system.  He  traced  to  it  two  effective 
bn  kes  upon  the  vital  progress  of  upper-  and  middle- 
class  people,  attributing  indeed  to  these  two  factors 
much  of  the  obvious  failure  of  the  secure  classes  to 
jusify  their  favourable  handicap  in  life  by  producing 
eitlier  a  high  average  of  intelligence  or  a  consistent 
standard  of  social  goodwill.  The  first  he  spoke  of  as 
a  '  cleavage  between  the  generations  '  that  divorces 
the  thought  and  will  of  the  young  from  that  of  their 
elders,  and  makes  each  of  an  endless  number  of  families 
a  Louse  divided  against  itself.  Going  back  to  the 
genesis  of  each  family  unit,  he  said  that  people  generally 
ma  Ty  with  some  ideal,  however  inarticulate,  in  their 
mir  ds — some  dim  notion  that  they  are  starting  a  vital 
chain  of  events  springing  from  the  glow  of  high 
emction  that,  for  all  its  human  universahty,  is  so 
uni<  luely  and  wonderfully  their  very  own.  The  coming 
of  children  extends  and  intensifies  the  feeling.  People 
whc  n  they  have  young  children,  for  whom  they  desire 
all  chat  is  best  in  life,  have  an  impulse  towards  the 
truest  human  values.  They  want  to  live  finely,  to 
create  a  free,  joyous  atmosphere  in  which  the  young 


142  W.  E.  FORD 

lives  may  grow  up.  This  may  be  no  more  than  a  vagu< 
instinct,  but  it  is  one  of  the  deeply  rooted  instincts 
that  have  come  through  long  evolution,  and  it  uniquely 
expresses  an  essential  aspect  of  the  human  spirit's  urg(i 
towards  perfection.  The  next  step  for  the  family 
unit  and,  Ford  maintained,  a  step  without  which 
there  can  be  no  true  realisation  of  this  high  impulse,  is 
to  attain  conscious  expression  of  its  ideal  through  inter- 
action between  the  minds,  the  wills,  and  the  char- 
acters of  parents  and  children.  Only  by  a  continually 
growing  reciprocity  could  the  unit  become  integrated, 
a  thing  of  meaning  and  purpose,  a  true  centre  of 
radiation.  And  just  as  children  reach  the  age  when 
conscious  reciprocity  begins  to  be  possible,  they  ar(3 
uprooted  and  sent  away  for  transplantation  into  th(i 
artificial  soil  of  a  boarding-school  community.  At 
the  best  they  keep  a  few  roots  still  alive  for  brief, 
periodical  retransplantation  in  the  home  soil ;  for  th(i 
most  part  the  distinctively  home-seeking  roots  shrivel, 
and  become  atrophied.  Children  home  for  the  hohdays 
are  usually  visitors,  not  vital  intimates,  in  a  home  that 
is  itself  quickly  becoming  atrophied  because  in  losini,' 
its  young  life  it  has  lost  its  raison  d'etre.^  The  oldc  r 
generation  stiffens,  in  thought  and  impulse,  more  tha  i 
the  advance  of  physical  age  would  warrant ;  the  ne^v 
pursues  its  own  paths,  unaided  by  experience  that  he  s 

*  Ford  did  not  use  an  argument  which  experience  seems  to  co  i- 
firm — that  when  there  are  younger  children  still  at  home,  the  eld  it 
brother  or  sister  home  for  the  hohdays  displays  a  far  less  in- 
penetrable  coating  of  school-imposed  reserve. 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  143 

missed  its  natural  season  of  mellowness  ;  and  when 
the  new  generation  comes  to  the  founding  of  its  own 
homes,  in  the  same  rosy  light  of  hope  and  expectation 
that  inspired  its  predecessor,  there  is  no  conscious 
hom  3-ideal  for  the  foundation,  no  body  of  remembered 
kno\  /ledge  and  understanding  of  home  life  upon  which 
to  b  ise  the  new  venture.  Ford  saw  in  this  round  of 
cans  ition  quite  half  the  reason  (the  muddle  of  our 
social  economics  providing  the  other  half)  for  the  total 
incompetence  of  many  homes  to  give  children  any 
upbringing  worth  the  name.  The  whole  business,  he 
said,  had  got  into  such  a  vicious  circle  that  there  was 
httle  wonder  if  a  few  upper-middle-class  theorists  had 
begu:i  to  condemn  the  institution  of  the  home  root  and 
bran(h. 

Th  I  second  educational  brake  was  in  a  way  the  reflex 
of  th(  first.  People  among  whom  the  artificial  cleavage 
between  the  generations  had  become  a  matter  of 
custom  and  acceptance  for  lack  of  any  other  vision, 
whos(  power  to  give  a  home  education  to  their  children 
had  become  paralysed  by  the  operation  of  the  vicious 
circle  naturally  regarded  teachers  and  schools — and 
even  lurses  and  nursery  governesses — as  a  means  for 
getting  rid  of  a  responsibility  that  they  were  impotent 
to  fulfil.  It  was  as  entirely  right  that  the  teacher 
should  be  called  in  to  supplement  the  parental  function 
as  thi.t  the  bootmaker  should  be  called  in  to  carry 
out  the  parental  wish  that  children  should  have  boots  ; 
but  the  trouble  was  that  the  parent  tended  to  delegate 


144  W.  E.  FORD 

the  whole  responsibihty  to  the  teacher,  and  so  to  the 
teaching  profession,  which  proceeded  inevitably  to 
evolve  a  stiff  and  cramping  professional  code  of 
training — even  as  the  bootmaking  profession,  un- 
controlled by  parental  enlightenment,  provided  stiff 
and  heavy  boots  that  ruined  children's  feet,  and  tlie 
poise  and  grace  of  their  movements.^  Such  wis 
always  the  way  with  professions  not  kept  in  touch  with 
intelligent  expression  of  the  needs  that  they  exist(3d 
to  supply.  The  professional  educator  might  complain 
of  the  commercial  parent  who  demanded — almost 
the  only  parental  demand  crude  and  simple  enough  to 
become  articulate,  as  things  are — a  business  training 
rather  than  general  culture  for  his  son ;  but  the 
professional  educator  himself  was  already  providiiig 
far  less  of  general  culture  than  of  another  and  an 
imwanted  business  training — a  training  in  the  busint  ss 
of  passing  examinations,  of  '  qualifying,'  if  for  any- 
thing beyond,  for  nothing  better  than  a  mere  trade  in 
scholarships,  including  the  trade  of  schoolmaster] iig 
for  the  next  generation  upon  the  same  lines.  This  v  as 
another  vicious  circle,  from  which  true  culture  a:id 
scholarship  had  always  to  break  away  at  a  tangent, 
in  virtue  of  the  enthusiasm  or  the  intellectual  honesty 
of  individuals,  always  in  opposition  and  sometimes  in 
painful  opposition  to  the  constraint  of  the  system. 

1  The  more  general  spread  among  doctors  of  a  knowledg(  of 
orthopaedics  had  begun  by  now  to  induce  something  approaclung 
*  parental  enlightenment '  in  this  respect.  The  *  good  strong  sc:  lool 
boot '  was  always  one  of  Ford's  bugbears. 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  145 

Nothing  better  could  be  expected  ;  again  a  lack  of 
reci])rocity  was  at  the  root  of  the  trouble — reciprocity 
betv/een  educator  and  parent,  between  school  and 
horns.  Homes  that  lost  touch  with  their  children,  and 
so  failed  to  fulfil  their  function  as  homes,  could  not 
affect  the  artificial  and  far  more  technical  machinery 
of  schools  ;  parents  who  did  not  know  their  children's 
natu  res  could  not  explain  to  their  servants  the  school- 
mast  ers  what  they  wanted  to  have  done  with  those 
natu  es.  All  that  they  could  do  was  to  let  the  business 
sUde  and  then  exercise  the  human  prerogative  of 
grumbling  at  the  result. 

Ford  was  far  from  believing  that  by  setting  up  a  day 
schoc  1  in  Holland  Road,  he  could  demonstrate  in  action 
the  ]deal  reciprocity  between  parent  and  teacher. 
Having  analysed  for  us  his  view  of  the  problem  up  to 
this  }>oint,  he  told  his  patron  very  definitely  that  he 
expected  to  achieve  little  in  the  way  of  parental  co- 
opera  don.  (Mr.  Wishart  had  by  now  entirely  agreed 
to  th<;  day-school  plan.)  The  average  parent  would 
simply  lack  the  impulse  ;  and  without  the  impulse, 
Ford  declared,  little  could  be  done.  He  could  only 
leave  the  channels  open,  welcome  every  inquiry  and 
every  sign  of  interest  on  the  part  of  any  parent,  and 
take  e  /ery  opportunity  of  talking  over  some  small  co- 
ordination  of  school  and  home  methods.  But  there 
would  be  a  much  greater  chance  of  unconscious 
reciprocity  through  the  children  themselves.  Ford 
launchid   into   one   of   his   electrical   analogies.    As 

K 


146  W.  E.  FORD 

hanging  pithballs  dart  to  and  fro  between  two  surfaces 
that  carry  different  electrical  charges,  bearing  each 
its  small  charge  across  the  intervening  gap,  gradually 
equalising  the  potential  between  the  two,  so  the 
children  would  carry  ideas  from  school  to  home  a:id 
from  home  back  to  school,  and  thus  home  and  school 
would  react  upon  one  another  unconsciously  and 
inevitably,  in  so  far  as  there  was  vitality  in  either. 

'  You  're  an  insatiable  man,'  said  Mr.  Wishart  drily, 
and  turned  to  me  to  explain  :  '  He  's  for  educating 
the  parents  too — that 's  all  about  it.' 

Ford  admitted  the  accusation  cheerfully,  saying  that 
no  education  was  of  much  value  that  had  not  that 
effect.  Every  new  generation  was  an  Aeneas  that  bad 
to  carry  the  old  along  or  to  leave  it  helpless  behind 

Miss  Wishart,  who  had  been  listening  to  the  dis- 
cussion in  silence,  remarked  that  at  any  rate  she  was 
glad  that  the  school  was  not  to  be  a  boarding-school. 
A  boarding-school,  she  said,  was  just  an  artificial 
orphanage.  Ford  had  at  this  time  a  shyness,  a  certain 
tender  diffidence,  in  direct  talk  with  her,  and  said 
nothing,  but  he  flashed  a  quick  glance  of  apprecia  ion 
for  the  felicitous  simphcity  of  this  brief  formula  for 
his  thesis. 

These  preliminary  discussions  were  concerned,  for 
the  most  par^,  with  questions  of  organisation  and 
method  that  will  find  their  place  when  I  come  to  v  rite 
of  the  school  in  being.  Miss  Wishart,  when  she  was 
present,  spoke  little,  and  generally  with  the  effec  t  of 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  147 

putting  some  carefuUy  elaborated  theory  of  Ford's 
und«;r  the  test  of  its  simplest  human  application,  as 
thoi  gh  she  had  been  afraid  of  being  carried  away  by 
his  ])ower  of  statement  and  the  force  of  his  conviction. 
The:e  was  an  occasion,  during  the  time  in  which  the 
first  broad  lines  of  the  scheme  were  being  laid  down, 
whe:i  Ford  confessed  to  a  strong  leaning  towards  co- 
educ  ation.  He  had  been  reading  many  arguments,  he 
said  both  for  and  against  the  idea  of  teaching  boys 
and  ^irls  together,  and  had  been  quite  unable  to  make 
out  liow  all  the  trouble  arose  over  a  very  simple  matter. 
The  plan  of  shepherding  children  into  separate  sex- 
herds  was,  and  always  had  been  as  far  as  history 
recoided,  the  symptom  of  an  unhealthy  standard  in 
regard  to  sex.  It  was  obviously  the  normal  and 
natural  thing  that  boys  and  girls  should  be  brought 
up  ill  association  with  one  another ;  as  things  were, 
they  grew  up  in  an  ignorance  of  each  other's  ways  and 
thou.^hts,  of  which  the  results  were  always  tiresome 
and  ( ften  tragic  ;  segregation  was  the  oddity,  an  oddity 
that  a  few  civilisations,  including  our  own,  had  learned 
to  ta'ce  for  granted.  In  the  same  way  the  Mahomedan 
world  had  learned  to  take  for  granted  the  entire 
segregation  of  women,  an  equally  absurd  and  con- 
venient simplification  of  a  vital  problem.  The  only 
practical  question  was  this  :  Had  our  standards, 
actually,  fallen  so  low  that  the  healthiness  of  childhood 
could  not  be  trusted  to  put  the  fact  of  sex  in  its  proper 
place  ?    Or  was  it  only  that  our  native  carelessness 


148  W.  E.  FORD 

had  allowed  a  monastic  precedent  to  become  induratad 
and  to  gather  accretions  of  custom  and  dignity  till  it 
took  on  the  airs  of  a  natural  law  ?  Ford  inclined  to 
the  latter  view.  In  so  far  as  fear  of  the  sex  motive  in 
children  came  in  to  support  the  custom  of  segregaticn, 
it  must  be  a  chimerical  fear,  rooted  in  the  upside-down 
argument — or  the  bare,  unargued  supposition — that 
because  sex  was  a  potentially  dangerous  power,  there- 
fore the  sexes  had  better  be  trained  as  foreigners  to 
one  another.  *  You  might  just  as  well  say,'  Ford 
illustrated,  *  if  you  found  that  grown-up  Bengalis  and 
Hindus  had  a  way  of  flying  at  one  another's  throats 
when  they  met,  that  therefore  Hindu  and  Bengali  chil- 
dren ought  always  to  be  educated  in  separate  schools.' 
Mr.  Wishart,  like  the  majority  of  Scots  people,  hiid 
no  instinctive  prejudice  against  co-education,  but  jie 
questioned  the  fitness  of  this  racial  analogy.  In  the 
case  of  the  hypothetical  Indian  difficulty,  he  said,  it 
would  be  a  question  of  getting  the  children  to  like 
instead  of  hating  one  another  ;  in  the  case  of  boys  and 
girls  the  whole  supposed  danger  was  of  their  liking 
one  another  too  much.  But  Ford  maintained  thit 
'  liking '  was  exactly  what  had  to  be  learned  in  both 
cases.  The  more  girls  and  boys  could  find  th  ir 
reciprocity  in  liking  one  another,  the  less  they  woi  Id 
bother  themselves  with  premature  and  imitative 
experiments  in  loving.  And  the  sweeping,  uncontrc  li- 
able passion,  he  said,  that  gets  people  into  trouble  la  er 
on,  was  considerably  more  akin  to  hatred  than  to  liking. 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  149 

He  turned  to  Miss  Wishart,  who  had  been  playing 
Bralims  to  us  after  lunch  before  the  talk  had  begun,  to 
compare  liking  to  the  technique  of  music,  and  passion 
to  its  inspiration.  When  you  know  at  sight  how  to 
finger  and  phrase  a  passage,  the  inspiration  of  music 
flow^  through  you  in  pure  joy  ;  the  less  you  are  at  home 
with  your  instrument,  the  more  the  inspiration  worries 
and  1  ears  at  you,  and  the  more  you  plunge  into  mistakes 
— crj  shing  discords  that  you  hate  yourself  for  having 
prod  iced  the  moment  you  hear  them. 

*  You  're  wanting  a  kind  of  school  of  love,  Mr.  Ford/ 
Miss  Wishart  commented.  That,  she  went  on  to  imply, 
seem*  d  to  be  going  a  long  way. 

*  A  grounding  in  the  elements,'  Ford  laughed,  and 
began  to  speak  of  the  many-sided  mutuality  of  interests 
that  ( ould  and  ought  to  grow  up  between  girls  and  boys 
if  romantic  love,  when  it  came  in  due  course,  was  to 
find  true  and  happy  expression. 

Mr.  Wishart  was  not  so  sure  about  Ford's  *  due 
cours( .'  Would  not  Nature,  in  the  guise  of  Romance, 
assert  itself  too  soon  ?  Was  it  not  saner  and  safer  to 
keep  young  people's  sex  on  one  side  till  its  time  had 
come  ' 

Very  likely  it  would  be.  Ford  agreed,  if  it  could  be 
done  ;  but  he  himself  would  as  soon  undertake  to  put 
babies  heads  on  one  side  till  they  were  ready  to  think 
with  them.  Developing  sex  was  the  inevitable  com- 
panion of  adolescence  in  any  case ;  the  only  question  was 
how  lb  development  would  proceed  most  naturally  and 


150  W.  E.  FORD 

unconsciously.  He  had  no  experience,  of  course  ;  but 
his  instinct  was  that  free  association  over  all  the 
correlative  interests  of  young  life  was  the  natural 
way.'  1 

Mr.  Wishart  was  inclined  to  agree  with  the  instinct, 
but  to  go  cautiously  in  the  matter  of  its  immediate 
appHcation  to  practice.  If  Ford  was  right,  he  said,  we 
had  to  consider  people  who  had  got  themselves  into 
another  of  Ford's  vicious  circles.  *  At  this  rate,  it 's 
not  surprising  if  civilisation 's  a  bit  dizzy,'  he  remarked 
parenthetically.  If  boys  and  girls  ought  to  be  educal  cd 
so  as  to  develop  their  main  interests  in  common,  tbicn 
parents  who  had  not  been  so  educated  themselves 
would  be  very  slow  to  realise  the  fact.  Most  people 
were  naturally  and  perhaps  mercifully  blind  to  chances 
of  development  that  they  had  lost  through  deficiencies 
in  their  mode  of  education.  And  there  was  prejudice 
to  be  considered — the  habit  that  Ford  had  mentioned 
of  taking  separate  education  for  granted.  He  suggested 
that  Ford  should  feel  his  own  feet  in  the  matter  by 
degrees,  and  at  the  same  time  avoid  alienating  ':he 
ordinary  parent  ('  it 's  those  that  we  have  to  get,'  he 
said.  '  No  school  is  going  to  live  on  the  enlighteied 
ones  alone  ') — by  starting  with  a  boys'  school  tliat 
admitted  girls  to  its  youngest  class.  No  one  cc  iild 
object    nowadays,    with    boy-and-girl    kindergarl  ens 

*  My  own  experiences  of  co-educational  and  of  separate  sch  >ols, 
and  what  I  know  of  the  experience  of  others,  have  convincec  me 
that  in  actual  fact  sex-consciousness  appears  far  more  re  i  lily 
among  boys  or  girls  who  are  herded  apart. 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  151 

everywhere  for  precedent ;  and  then  there  would  be  no 
reason  why  boys  and  girls  should  not  go  on  together 
to  the  next  class  in  the  usual  course  ;  and  if  the 
exf  eriment  seemed  a  success  they  could  let  co-education 
spread  upwards  through  the  school.  You  could  reform 
an\  thing,  Mr.  Wishart  contended,  as  soon  as  you  could 
discover  a  method  of  reforming  it  gradually. 

1  brd,  with  his  inveterate  habit  of  referring  everything 
to  fundamentals,  owed  a  great  deal  to  the  Scottish 
pra  :ticaUty  that  went  hand  in  hand  with  Mr.  Wishart's 
idealism.  Ford  could  be  practical  enough  when  he 
wa.-  faced  with  practical  detail,  as  was  to  be  shown  by 
his  work  as  a  headmaster ;  but  in  tracing  the  main 
lines  of  a  project,  as  in  these  preliminary  discussions, 
he  tended  to  broaden  every  issue  beyond  the  practical 
fiel(  I.  In  part  it  was  the  natural  bias  of  his  essentially 
philosophical  mind  ;  in  part,  also,  he  knew  that  Mr. 
Wishart  (and,  I  will  dare  to  say.  Miss  Wishart  as  well) 
liked  to  see  the  gates  of  a  subject  thrown  wide,  and  that 
he  could  rely  upon  them  to  draw  the  Hght  of  his  gener- 
alisitions  into  focus  upon  the  practical  issue. 

I  pon  one  practical  point  Ford  was  firm  in  applying 
his  philosophical  theory  of  reciprocity.  He  insisted 
tha:  the  school  must  pay  its  way  or  go  under.  Mr. 
Wishart  had  planned  at  first  for  a  capital  outlay  to 
stait  the  undertaking,  with  an  allowance  of  income 
to  cover  rent  and  certain  other  fixed  expenses,  and  a 
reserve  in  case  of  emergencies.  Ford  would  hear  of 
not  ling  but  the  initial  outlay.    Once  the  school  was 


152  W.  E.  FORD 

established,  he  said,  his  business  would  be  to  try  to 
make  it  indispensable  for  at  least  as  many  parents  as 
would  sufl&ce  to  keep  it  going.  In  any  of  the  liberal 
professions  financial  reward  for  the  work  given  was 
a  crude  and  unsatisfactory  symbol  of  reciprocity 
between  the  worker  and  the  worked-for,  but  it  was  ths 
symbol  that  found  general  acceptance.  What  people 
would, not  at  present  pay  for  (he  restated  Ruskin's 
dictima,  with  a  difference)  they  ought  not  at  present  to 
have.  The  work  of  the  school,  to  carry  the  moral 
support  of  the  parents,  must  rest  upon  their  financial 
support ;  one  can  only  carry  people  along  by  starting 
from  where  they  are,  not  from  where  one  would  like; 
them  to  be,  and,  roughly,  the  point  from  which  the>' 
are  prepared  to  start  is  the  point  at  which  they  are 
ready  to  pay  the  fare.  A  private  subsidy,  he  was 
sure,  would  only  tempt  him  to  drift  out  of  the  necessary 
reciprocal  touch  with  the  parents  by  giving,  for  his 
own  satisfaction,  more  than  they  could  understand  or 
appreciate. 

*  But  isn't  there  something  rather  fine,'  Miss  Wishart 
put  in,  '  about  giving  people  bread  when  they  ask  for 
a  stone  ?  ' 

'  Yes— bread,*  said  Ford.  '  But  not  jam  as  well- 
not  till  they  have  learned  to  digest  and  to  demand  the 
bread.' 


r 


CHAPTER  VIII 


A  VISITOR  to  Ford's  school  was  always  impressed, 
favjurably  or  otherwise,  by  its  unpretentiousness. 
No"  hing  was  on  show  ;  nothing  expressed  insistence 
upcn  the  scholastic  atmosphere.  The  house  in 
Holland  Road  gave  the  impression  of  being  a  house 
before  it  was  a  school-house  ;  the  rooms  were  rooms 
first  and  class-rooms  second.  The  little  community 
was  a  household  first  and  foremost,  and  then  a  house- 
hole  specialised,  but  specialised  as  quietly  and  un- 
obtrusively as  possible,  for  the  business  of  teaching. 

F)rd  recognised  that  his  refusal  to  let  desks  drive 
out  tables  and  chairs,  or  maps  oust  pictures  from  the 
walls,  made  the  place  look  amateurish  in  the  eyes  of 
many  parents,  even  as  his  system  of  teaching  seemed 
casual  and  discursive  to  any  one  who  did  not  trouble 
to  n  alise  the  broad  and  systematic  plans  upon  which 
it  wis  based.  His  views  upon  desks  and  wall-maps 
were  of  a  piece  with  his  view  of  education  in  general. 
I  ren  lember  his  explaining  these  views  to  a  conscientious 
motl  er  who  had  made  something  of  a  study  of  modern 
class-room  apparatus,  and  was  as  much  scandalised  to 
see  a  class  sitting  on  chairs  and  working  at  tables  as 
if  sh;  had  seen  the  children  encouraged  to  eat  Irish 


158 


154  W.  E.  FORD 

stew  with  their  lingers.  Desks,  he  said,  cramped  a 
child  into  one  position.  If  the  desk  could  be,  and  was, 
adjusted  to  the  child's  measurements  with  scientific 
accuracy,  the  one  position  that  was  allowed  for  was  a 
right  one  ;  if  not,  it  was  a  wrong  one.  But  no  child 
could  stay  in  one  position,  right  or  wrong,  for  more 
than  a  minute,  and  the  ideal  one-position  desk  required 
an  ideal  one-position  child  not  yet  invented.  With  a 
table  and  a  chair  any  number  of  slight  changes  cf 
position  were  possible,  and  a  child  could  be  taught, 
as  he  ought  to  be  taught,  what  positions  were  not 
good  for  his  bodily  well-being,  and  for  what  reasons. 

Ford's  attitude  towards  this  detail  of  physics! 
education  typifies  his  treatment  of  mental  and  moral 
education.  He  disliked  harness  and  blinkers  for 
children,  believing  rather  in  giving  them  the  oppor- 
tunity and  the  means  for  self -guidance.  To  his  mind, 
rigid  rules  of  work  and  of  behaviour  were  as  useless — 
and  as  ugly — as  rigid  desks.  Other  educators  have 
had  the  same  idea,  but  have  substituted  slackness  for 
rule.  Ford  was  among  the  more  thoughtful  ones  who 
have  realised  that  there  is  no  freedom  without  seli- 
rule  ;  and  that  self-rule  has  to  be  taught. 

His  objection  to  wall-maps  as  a  permanent  school- 
room decoration  was  precisely  the  reason  for  whicli 
many  teachers  like  to  keep  them  hung  up  :  that  the  y 
help  children  to  fix  the  shape  of  countries  in  their 
minds  imconsciously  and  automatically.  Ford  con- 
sidered that  a  map  lies  to  a  child  who  merely  starts 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  155 

at  it:  it  leads  him  to  think  of  countries  in  terms  of 
flc  t  space  only,  as  abstractions  without  reality.  He 
w  mted  to  teach  what  a  country  is  and  what  happens 
in  it  before  bringing  in  an  abstract  diagram  of  its 
shape  ;  and  to  lead  up  to  keen  and  inteUigent  map- 
re  iding  he  wanted  to  teach  how  lands  are  explored  and 
surveyed,  as  well  as  how  they  have  been  formed  by 
N  iture. 

I  am  tempted  to  go  on  and  explain  how  he  linked  up 
st  )ries  of  exploration  with  history  teaching,  surveying 
with  geometry,  and  physical  geography  both  with 
w  )rld-history  and  with  natural  science ;  Ford's 
ec.ucational  system  had  all  its  parts  so  closely  inter- 
c(  nnected  that  I  cannot  touch  it  at  a  single  point — like 
this  point  of  the  absence  of  wall-maps — without  being 
drawn  into  a  consideration  of  the  whole.  To  look 
under  the  surface  of  his  method  was  to  see  the  natural 
connections  between  diverse  ideas  spreading  and 
hiking  up  in  every  direction.  This  was  why  his 
pupils  remembered  what  they  were  taught.  They  had 
e\  erything  else  to  remember  it  by.  But  this  was  also 
why  his  scheme  appeared  unsystematic  to  people 
accustomed  to  keep  ideas  in  watertight  compartments, 
ar  d  to  bring  out  only  one  at  a  time.  The  visitor  looked 
fo :  visible  scholastic  machinery  ;  and  there  was  none 
to  be  seen.  The  invisible  mechanism  was  the  type  of 
m  jntal  life  by  which  the  school  subsisted. 

Mr.  Wishart,  while  fully  appreciative  of  Ford's 
idial,  was  concerned  from  a  business  point  of  view  at 


156  W.  E.  FORD 

his  disregard  for  visible  evidence  of  the  nature  of  the 
school's  work.  Ford,  he  said,  was  hiding  his  light 
under  a  bushel.  It  seems  to  me,  in  retrospect,  that  the 
school  might  have  become  famous,  instead  of  being 
appreciated  only  by  an  enthusiastic  few,  if  a  way  could 
have  been  found  to  show  more  tangible  results  of  what 
was  being  done.  But  no  one  was  inventive  enough 
to  suggest  exhibits  which,  while  genuinely  representing 
the  work  of  a  class,  would  be  obvious  and  striking 
enough  to  impress  a  visitor  ignorant  of  educational 
method.  Only  Ford  could  have  done  this,  and  Ford 
had  no  wish  to  do  anything  of  the  kind.  He  said  that 
he  wanted  our  classes  to  do  their  work  for  its  own  sake, 
not  in  order  to  impress  stupid  people.  I  think  he  was 
glad,  at  the  back  of  his  mind,  to  keep  off  the  kind  of 
parent  who  is  always  wanting  to  '  see  results  ' — to  pull 
the  plant  up  and  see  how  it  is  growing.  His  idea  of  a 
partnership  between  school  and  home  in  the  up- 
bringing of  a  child  demanded  parents  who  would  enter 
into  the  school's  interests  without  having  the  school 
turned  into  a  show.  Certainly  the  understanding  that 
existed  from  the  first,  and  grew  fuller  as  time  went  on, 
between  the  school  and  the  keenest  of  the  parents, 
was  a  unique  and  an  excellent  thing  ;  but  many  of  the 
parents  dropped  the  attempt  to  understand  Ford's 
work  at  a  very  early  stage.  It  is  one  thing  to  teach 
children  to  think  ;  it  is  quite  another  to  induce  thought 
in  grown-up  people  who  have  firmly  established  in 
themselves   the   habit   of  avoiding  thought.     Ford's 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  157 

system,  as  it  was,  was  suited  to  an  aristocracy  of 
thcughtful  and  responsible  parents.  To  have  made  it 
democratic  he  would  have  had  to  make  concessions — 
to  lower  the  thought  of  the  school,  in  some  degree, 
tovards  the  level  of  thought  prevailing  in  the  average 
hone.  And  Ford  would  never  hear  of  the  '  demo- 
cratic '  view  that  necessitates  levelling  down. 

The  Wisharts  had  many  friends  in  London  whose 
int(  rest  was  easily  engaged  in  a  scheme  for  an  ideal 
education.  Some  of  these  sent  their  children  to  the 
school,  several  from  a  considerable  distance  ;  others, 
in  -urn,  interested  their  friends,  passing  on  Ford's 
pro^  pectus  and  syllabus — a  closely-written  digest  of  his 
sch(  me  of  teaching  which  was  an  educational  eye-opener 
for  "  hose  who  troubled  to  read  it.  The  nucleus  of  the 
schc  ol's  cUentele — eight  families,  sending  ten  children, 
if  I  remember  rightly — was  of  Mr.  and  Miss  Wishart's 
fom  ing.  Seven  more  children,  our  seven  youngest, 
cami  from  the  immediate  neighbourhood,  where  a 
prin  ed  annoimcement  of  the  school's  inception  had 
been  circulated  by  post.  Although  we  had  had  hopes 
of  starting  upon  a  larger  scale  than  this.  Ford  was  not 
ill  satisfied  with  a  total  of  seventeen  children  for  the 
first  term.  We  shared  the  teaching  with  a  Swiss  lady, 
Mme.  Andr^,  who  had  done  much  work  at  Neuchatel 
in  th  3  educational  tradition  of  Pestalozzi  and  Froebel ; 
besides  teaching  the  small  kindergarten  class  exceed- 
ingly well,  she  held  the  office  of  matron,  and  came 


158  W.  E.  FORD 

into  daily  collision,  over  every  conceivable  matter  of 
opinion,  with  the  mothers  or  nurses  who  convoyed  the 
children  to  and  from  the  school.  Ford,  called  in  as 
arbitrator  in  many  of  these  disputes,  had  his  powers  of 
diplomacy  severely  tested.  In  addition  I,  as  a  novice 
in  the  art  of  teaching,  was  dependent  upon  his  direction 
at  every  turn.  Perhaps  it  was  as  well  that  he  had  not 
larger  numbers  to  cope  with  in  first  encountering  th^ 
realities  of  headmastership — though  a  small  community 
is  in  some  ways  more  difficult  to  govern  than  a  large  one . 

At  any  rate,  the  parents  of  a  small  school  show  little 
compunction  in  taking  up  the  headmaster's  time,  and 
Ford  had  plenty  of  opportunity  to  gauge  the  main 
difficulty  in  establishing  a  partnership  between  school 
and  home.  There  was  a  local  materfamilias,  well 
endowed  with  that  majestic  something  which  is  called 
a  presence,  whom  I  will  call  Mrs.  A.  Besides  a  presence, 
she  had  the  voice  and  articulation  of  one  whose  mind 
is  made  up  on  all  points,  and  her  statements  to  Ford 
were  for  all  the  world  to  hear. 

She  began  by  expressing  the  hope  that  he  had  a 
strong  personahty.  A  strong  personahty,  she  assured 
him,  was  essential  for  a  schoolmaster.  Ford  said  thiit 
he  hoped  to  develop  some  signs  of  personahty  in  the 
children.  '  Children  have  no  personality,'  said  Mrs.  A. 
(I  was  thankful  that  Mme.  Andree  was  not  present  o 
pour  a  torrent  of  wrath  upon  this  fiat  negation  A 
Froebel's  chief  principle.)  Ford  suggested  that  perha  :»s 
it  was  the  fault  of  their  upbringing  if  they  had  net. 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  159 

But  Mrs.  A.  had  disposed  of  that  subject,  and  now 
wished  to  let  Ford  know  that  her  boy,  then  aged  six, 
wo  lid  in  time  have  to  make  his  own  way  in  the  world. 
Fo]  d  remarked  that  if  the  child  were  learning  to  think 
duiing  the  next  few  years  he  would  be  doing  as  well 
for  his  future  career  as  possible. 

'  There  's  altogether  too  much  thinking,'  said  Mrs.  A. 
(wl  lom  I  hope  my  memory  reports  with  fair  accuracy — 
nothing  but  direct  statement  can  suggest  the  decision 
of  ler  pronouncement.)  '  When  it 's  a  question  of  a 
scholarship  or  a  place  in  some  business,  the  thing  will 
be,  What  does  he  know  ?  '  Having  thus  settled  that 
poi  it,  she  told  Ford  that  the  boy  had  enough  play  at 
hoi  le,  and  that  she  expected  him  to  work  at  school ; 
that  he  was  very  naughty  at  home,  and  was  being  sent 
to  school  to  learn  discipHne  ;  and  that  he  was  one  of 
those  children  that  can  be  led,  but  cannot  be  driven. 

Mrs.  A.  proved  quite  immune  to  Ford's  idea  of 
parental  co-operation,  but  she  became  a  staunch 
supporter  of  the  school  as  she  noted  the  results  in  her 
owii  boy's  case  of  a  method  of  teaching  which  she 
coniistently  fought  at  each  successive  point.  But 
having  issued  her  instructions  she  paid  little  more 
attc  ntion  to  Ford  that  term,  preferring  a  good  honest 
nosr-to-nose  argument  with  Mme.  Andree  over  every 
deti  il  of  Froebel's  system  of  educative  play.  Both 
ladi  is  said  their  say,  often  simultaneously,  and  were 
satisfied ;  and  meanwhile  the  education  of  Jack  A. 
pro(  eeded,  to  their  equal  contentment. 


i6o  W.  E.  FORD 

As  representing  another  type  of  parent  equally 
inaccessible  to  Ford's  co-operation  ideal,  I  have  a 
fairly  distinct  recollection  of  a  mother  who  may  be 
called  Mrs.  B.  She  stood  in  awe  of  Ford  from  the  first, 
overpowered  by  her  recognition  of  something  in  him 
which  she  inadequately  described  as  his  '  cleverness.' 
She  came  to  me  as  to  a  less  luminous  body — shining 
with  the  milder,  reflected  light — and  said  that  she  was 
sure  Mr.  Ford  was  a  wonderfully  clever  teacher,  but 
that  she  did  hope  he  had  a  strong  personality.  (The 
opening  was  already  familiar  to  me  ;  it  is  one  of  the 
two  principal  remarks  by  which  the  teaching  profession 
recognises  the  inept  parent.)  She  was  afraid  that  h(3r 
little  boy  had  rather  a  weak  nature.  He  was  so 
easily  led  into  mischief  by  older  children.  (Charlie  B. 
proved  to  be  an  original-minded  yoimg  monkey  who 
never  joined  a  group,  whether  for  good  or  for  mis- 
chievous fun,  without  leading  it.)  He  needed,  she  said, 
a  strong  hand  over  him,  to  influence  him  in  the  right 
direction.  I  had  sufficiently  absorbed  Ford's  prin- 
ciples to  offer  a  tentative  suggestion  that  perhaps  tlie 
child  needed  to  be  taught  how  to  keep  a  controlling 
hand  upon  himself.  Mrs.  B.  feared  that  he  was  of  too 
weak  a  nature  ever  to  learn  this.  She  placed  implicit 
confidence  in  Mr.  Ford.  If  only  his  personality  wns 
strong  enough  to  overcome  the  weakness  of  her  bo>  s 
character.  .  .  .  She  broke  off,  leaving  me  to  imagine 
what  the  intensity  of  her  gratitude  would  be.  But 
she  recovered  herself  to  add  that  Charlie  was  one  if 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  i6i 

thoie  children  who  can  be  led  but  cannot  be 
driven. 

\\  hen  I  reported  my  interview  with  Mrs.  B.  to  Ford, 
he  said  at  once  that  he  had  little  hope  of  her  from 
the  :o-operative  point  of  view.  She  was  the  kind  of 
pers)n,  he  said,  who  offei"s  nothing — not  even  what 
ther ;  is  to  offer — and  quietly,  humbly,  expects  every- 
thin.;,'.  None  the  less,  Mrs.  B.  proved  a  '  good  '  parent, 
from  the  school's  point  of  view.  She  at  least  sent  us 
her  two  younger  children  as  soon  as  each  was  old 
enough.  But  she  never  knew  what  was  done  with 
then  .  Her  enthusiasm  for  Ford's  scheme  rested  upon 
a  bh'iid  devotion. 

I  remember  Ford  alluding,  two  or  three  times  in  the 
course  of  that  first  term,  to  the  two  catch  phrases  that 
ring  ^  o  inevitably  upon  a  teacher's  ear.  '  These  people 
have  got  hold  of  the  right  end  of  the  stick  at  last,'  he 
once  said.  *  No  child  can  be  driven,  effectually ; 
leadiiig  is  the  only  way.'  But  they  got  no  further, 
as  he  put  it  on  another  occasion,  than  the  very  tip  of 
the  s  ick's  right  end.  They  would  make  it  out  that 
the  s'  ick  itself  was  the  good  old-fashioned  '  rod '  of 
our  fc  refathers  in  a  new  incarnation — that  for  coercion 
y  bating  we  could  only  substitute  coercion  by  a 
mysterious  thing  called  personality,  in  its  essence  a  kind 
of  hypnotism.  This,  Ford  maintained,  was  a  step 
downward,  not  upward,  from  the  '  rod.'  The  domin- 
ance of  the  thick  stick  at  least  left  a  child  free  to  rebel 
in  seccet ;    the  dominance  of  a  personality  invaded 

L 


i62  W.  E.  FORD 

even  the  secret  recesses  of  his  soul,  and  left  him  no 
freedom  at  all.  '  They  Ve  got  the  right  end  of  the 
wrong  stick,  in  fact,'  he  concluded.  Leading,  not 
driving,  was  the  right  way  for  education  ;  but  it  must 
not  be  a  leading  of  the  blindfolded.  It  would  give  a 
better  idea  of  the  teacher's  business.  Ford  thouglit, 
to  say  not  that  he  has  to  lead  the  way,  but  that  he  has 
to  point  the  way.  Children  have  to  be  taught  to  see 
clearly  what  the  pointing  finger  indicates  ;  but  to 
reach  the  spot  indicated  they  must  not  be  led  there  in 
blindness,  but  encouraged  to  see  and  feel  their  way 
to  it,  and  to  strengthen  their  mental  and  spiritual 
sinews  by  a  struggle  of  their  own  to  climb  to  the  id(jal 
that  has  been  made  clear  to  them. 

'  Only  we  've  got  to  be  jolly  sure,'  Ford  added,  '  that 
we  don't  point  to  anything  quite  out  of  their  reac:h. 
Then  they  fall  backwards  and  get  disheartened.' 

The  seventeen  children  were  taught  in  two  classes, 
of  which  the  higher  was  subdivided  again  for  certciin 
subjects.  Their  ages  ranged  from  six  to  twelve;  a 
few  boys  of  thirteen  and  fourteen  would  have  been 
sent  to  us,  but  Ford  had  decided  to  take  none  o/er 
twelve  to  begin  with,  intending  to  build  up  the  middle 
and  upper  forms  of  the  school  chiefly  of  those  v  ho 
should  rise,  properly  grounded  in  the  elements  of  liis 
system,  from  the  lower.  It  was  not  only  that  he 
wanted  to  make  sure  in  this  way  that  a  coher.nt 
sequence  of  method  should  eventually  run  through 
the  school ;   he  also  hoped  for  the  support  of  parents 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  163 

who  would  have  seen  the  point  of  his  method  in  the 
earher  stages,  and  would  realise  that  he  knew  what  he 
was  about  when  it  came  to  the  later  stages. 

The  kindergarten  opened  as  a  httle  group  of  four 
bo  /s  and  three  girls,  all  in  their  sixth  or  seventh  year  ; 
new  arrivals,  dropping  in  casually  during  the  term,  in- 
creased the  number  to  a  dozen.  Here  Mme.  Andree 
tai  ght  with  the  practised  patience  and  suavity  which 
she  reserved  for  her  dealings  with  children,  clamouring 
to  Ford  every  now  and  again  for  the  apparatus  pre- 
scr  bed  by  the  Froebel  Society.  Ford,  who  always 
hell  that  no  teacher  should  be  more  dependent  upon 
rea  ly-made  apparatus  than  was  absolutely  necessary, 
encouraged  her  to  invent,  and  to  get  her  children  to 
invent,  every  kind  of  home-made  substitute  for  the 
Froebel  *  gifts/  thus  logically  carrying  on  Froebel's 
own  principle  of  drawing  out  the  originative  activity 
of  children. 

He  took  the  kindergarten  himself  for  a  daily  lesson 
known  as  '  Questions,'  which  consisted  nominally  in 
his  ( ;xplaining  in  turn  as  many  problems  as  the  children 
had  time  to  propound  to  him,  but  really  in  his  showing 
them  how  to  hunt  down  the  answers  for  themselves 
witl  as  little  help  as  possible.  He  always  allowed 
thrc3  questions  from  the  same  child  upon  the  same 
subject,  provided  they  could  be  put  in  the  form  of 
WTii.t?  How?  and  Why  ?— in  that  order.  What, 
Jack  A.  would  ask,  were  the  men  doing  in  the  road 
outs  de  ?    Evidence  was  forthcoming  from  the  different 


i64  W.  E.  FORD 

observations  of  the  children  who  had  watched  them  : 
they  were  laying  gas-pipes ;  and  there  followed  attempt  s 
on  the  children's  part  to  explain  what  coal-gas  is. 
(Ford,  of  course,  gave  no  scientific  explanation  at  th's 
stage — that  would  come  years  later — but  only  en- 
couraged description  and  definition  of  ,what  the 
children  had  observed.)  Next,  how  was  gas  made  ? 
Jack  A.  had  to  rest  content,  in  the  present  stage  of  his 
imderstanding,  with  an  elementary  and  partial  ex- 
amination of  this  query  ;  but  more  could  be  said  about 
the  way  in  which  gas  is  distributed  to  houses.  There 
was  a  pause  :  the  questioner  did  not  want  to  waste  the 
last  of  his  three  opportunities  to  lead  the  quest.  Then 
— '  Why  can't  you  see  the  gas  when  it  isn't  alight  ?  ' 

Ford  lit  a  cigarette  (not,  by  the  way,  his  usual 
practice  in  school  hours)  and,  blowing  a  puff  of  smoke 
round  the  gas-jet,  turned  it  on.  '  You  can,  now,'  ha 
said,  as  the  escaping  gas  swept  the  smoke  upwards. 
*  Can't  you  ?  '  The  class  assented,  all  but  Jack,  who 
was  keen  to  push  his  question  home.  '  No,  you  can't — 
you  only  see  the  smoke  go  up  !  '  he  said,  and  blushed 
with  pride  when  Ford  told  him  that  he  was  quite  rigl:  t 
— and  that  he  would  not  be  able  to  understand  why 
you  can  see  through  some  things,  and  cannot  see  otht  r 
things  at  all,  until  he  had  learned  a  great  deal  moie 
about  the  what  and  the  how  of  things. 

This  elementary  foundation-laying  for  an  orderly 
habit  of  thought  was  by  no  means  directed  towarcs 
satisfying  the    young  and  inquiring  mind  upon  all 


4 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  165 

points  ;  its  immediate  lesson  was,  rather,  that  there 
is  cnly  a  partial  answer  to  most  questions,  and  that  the 
conpleter  answer  needs  more  knowledge  and  more 
practice  in  thinking.  Visitors  who  came  in  to  hear 
Fo :d  give  a  lesson  often  thought  him  '  inconclusive,' 
whm  his  aim  was  to  make  children  begin  to  realise 
that  all  knowledge  is  inconclusive,  and  would  lose  its 
eternal  attraction  if  it  were  not.  His  later  work  with 
old  ^r  children  always  had  the  same  quality,  and  gave 
the  same  sense  that  the  class  was  a  single  organism 
reaching  out,  grasping  and  holding  what  it  was  able 
to  ^rasp*  but  always  with  an  eager  eye  upon  something 
be\ond,  not  yet  grasped,  but  presently  to  be  seized 
up(  n  and  made  a  handhold  in  the  further  climb  among 
the  mountain  ridge  of  knowledge. 

No  marks  or  prizes  were  given  in  Ford's  school. 
They  would  have  seemed  irrelevant.  Regarded  as 
concrete  recognition  of  a  child's  advance,  they  would 
hav3  meant  little  to  children  who  thought  less  of  the 
small  things  that  they  had  done  than  of  the  splendid 
thirgs  that  they  wanted  to  do  ;  regarded  as  a  stimulus 
to  ( ompetition  they  would  have  meant  nothing  to 
children  who  never  thought  about  beating  each  other, 
but  only  about  beating  themselves. 

Anong  the  ten  children,  that  first  term,  who  were 
abo^^e  the  kindergarten  age — our  Form  I.,  divided  for 
the  two  more  formal  subjects  of  grammar  and  mathe- 
mat  OS  into  Forms  la  and  16 — there  was  no  idea  of 
precedence  from  the  start,     la  gave   itself  no  airs 


i66  W.  E.  FORD 

because  it  knew  an  intransitive  from  a  copulative  verb 
or  could  solve  a  problem  in  simple  proportion  ;  some- 
body in  lb  was  always  likely  to  redress  the  balance 
when  the  two  divisions  united  into  a  homogeneous 
Form  I.  for  history  or  composition.  The  essence  of  th(i 
matter  is  that  Ford  studied  to  bring  out  the  some- 
thing unique  and  irreplaceable  that  exists  in  every  in- 
dividual child.  His  children  learned  to  respect  thi;^ 
something  in  one  another ;  and  they  learned  self- 
respect  by  the  same  process. 

This  is  a  biography  of  Ford,  not  a  treatise  upon  his 
educational  method,  but  a  few  notes  upon  that  method 
are  essential  because  his  teaching  was,  at  this  period, 
by  far  the  greater  part  of  his  life.  The  time-table  of 
our  little  Form  I.  really  gives  the  whole  of  his  system  in 
embryo.  When  Forms  II.,  III.,  IV.,  and  V.  came  into 
being  as  time  went  on,  their  time-tables  were  essentiall}^ 
the  same,  only  the  parts  of  Ford's  system  had  budded 
and  branched  into  an  increasing  diversity  of  connected 
'  subjects.'  The  day  began  with  a  scripture  lesson. 
Ford  regarded  the  Bible  as  a  history — the  history  of  a 
people,  viewed  from  the  single  standpoint  of  goodness . 
He  taught  that  in  the  Bible  you  find  everything  tested 
by  the  question.  Is  it  right  ? — a  question  often  aske<  I 
crudely  and  answered  clumsily,  but  always  insistent!/ 
asked.  As  he  taught  it,  the  Bible  was  the  story  of  th  '. 
development  of  a  sense  of  right.  With  this  main  lin:^ 
of  thought  he  connected  every  kind  of  incident  an  I 
illustration  from  history  and  from  everyday  life  wit:i 


i 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  167 


which  the  children  were  familiar.  He  taught  no  creed, 
considering  this  to  be  the  business  of  parents  and 
priests;  but  he  taught  simply  and  clearly  what  is 
and  has  been  beHeved  by  different  people,  and  what 
good  has  come  of  their  beliefs.  Later,  with  older 
children,  he  explained  other  beliefs  as  well  as  those  of 
the  Bible.  He  did  not  so  much  '  teach  a  religion  '  as 
brii.g  out  the  connection  of  all  religion  with  thought 
and  life,  and  its  influence  for  good  or  evil  according 
as  i:  is  nobly  or  degradedly  conceived. 

The  next  lesson  on  the  morning  list  was  grammar. 
Ford  taught  the  structure  of  language  as  a  single 
science,  beginning  with  the  structure  of  English,  then 
comparing  English  with  French,  and  connecting  both, 
later  on,  with  the  more  exact  structure  of  Latin.  He 
wasted  no  time  in  having  the  same  laws  of  language 
taught  separately  and  imder  different  names  as  English, 
French,  and  Latin  grammar  ;  and  as  regards  differences 
of  s'  ructure  between  languages  he  avoided  the  endless 
mistakes  that  children  make  through  confusing  the 
rules  of  one  language  with  those  of  another  by  setting 
out  these  differences  of  rule  parallel  to  one  another, 
as  it  were,  in  the  children's  minds.  He  used  no  text- 
bool3,  but  taught  children  how  to  reconstruct  the  rules 
of  ^  rammar  for  themselves  by  analysing  passages 
that  had  been  read  beforehand — often  passages  that 
had  been  read  in  other  lessons.  He  made  grammar 
interesting,  first,  because  he  used  the  fact  that  children 
always  like  to  pick  things  to  pieces  and  see  how  they 


i68  W.  E.  FORD 

are  made,  and  second,  because  he  chose  passages 
that  were  interesting  or  beautiful  in  themselves, 
and  showed  how  their  quality  depended  upon  ther 
structure. 

Mathematics  he  taught  as  one  science  from  the  first, 
and  throughout  the  later  development  of  the  school. 
To  teach  arithmetic,  geometry,  and  algebra  in  separate 
lessons  was  in  his  view  as  wasteful  of  time,  and  as 
misleading,  as  to  teach  the  structures  of  different 
languages  separately.  And  here  again  he  continually 
drew  material  from  other  lessons.  The  *  made-up ' 
problem — ^such  as  the  useless  ascertainment  of  the 
number  of  days  in  which  A  can  do  an  unspecified  piec':j 
of  work — had  no  place  in  his  teaching.  Actual  material 
for  problem  work  was  drawn  from  the  facts  and  figures 
of  the  geography  and  natural  science  lessons  and  from 
doings  in  real  life  with  which  the  children  had  some 
acquaintance  ;  and  they  learned  to  state  their  prob- 
lems for  themselves  as  well  as  to  solve  them.  Problem 
work  was  his  foundation  for  mathematical  teaching : 
practical  mathematics  came  before  theoretical.  At 
any  rate  he  was  so  far  justified  that  his  older  pupils 
eventually  showed  greater  keenness  for  pure  mathe- 
matics, and  better  sense  in  the  handling  of  theory , 
than  is  often  found  in  the  rank  and  file  of  advance<l 
mathematical  students. 

After  the  Swedish  drill  and  mid-morning  break  tha  I 
came  after  the  mathematical  lesson,  there  followed  v 
period  devoted  to  history  and  geography.     Ford  dii 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  169 

not  merge  the  two  subjects  entirely  into  one,  but  he 
taught  them  in  very  close  connection  with  one  another. 
He  thought  it  absurd  to  talk  about  the  activities  of 
man  without  constant  relation  to  the  environment  of 
man  ;  and,  since  he  taught  the  detailed  history  of 
individual  nations  only  within  a  general  framework  of 
world-history,  he  naturally  referred  at  every  turn  to 
that  historical  geography  which  explains  many  of 
man's  opportunities  and  vicissitudes  upon  this  planet. 
Th(  aspect  of  geography  which  is  really  a  branch  of 
physical  science  he  kept  in  connection  with  the  work 
dore  in  the  science  lessons ;  the  mathematics  of 
geography,  as  we  have  seen,  were  carried  forward  to  be 
woiked  out  in  the  mathematical  lesson.  The  bio- 
graphical and  literary  sides  of  history  were  connected 
with  the  lessons  in  literature  and  composition  next  to 
be  noted.  The  aspects  of  history  which  relate  to  modem 
civics  and  poUtics  came  into  touch  with  another  lesson 
to  be  described  later  on. 

The  literature  and  composition  period — the  last  in 
the  morning's  time-table — was  concerned  primcCrily 
witli  the  art  of  language,  as  the  grammar  period  was 
prinarily  concerned  with  the  science  of  language. 
Here  the  children  studied  models  of  language  rightly 
and  artistically  used,  English,  French,  and,  at  a  later 
stage,  Latin,  and  practised  their  immature  style  by 
endeavouring  to  summarise,  restate  or  imitate  the 
written  word  of  masters  in  the  literary  craft.  Ford 
cha  e  his  models  both  for  their  intrinsic  literary  value 


170  W.  E.  FORD 

and  for  their  relation  to  any  of  the  other  lessons  theit 
the  Form  was  learning  at  the  time.  The  great  historians, 
the  great  scientists,  the  great  statesmen  were  called  in 
evidence  of  his  teachings  in  history,  science  or  politico, 
as  well  as  the  great  poets  in  prose  or  verse,  the  perfection 
of  whose  phrasing  was  later  to  be  put  under  the 
grammatical  microscope.  The  children's  own  com- 
positions, however,  were  not  only  in  reproduction  or 
imitation  of  models  ;  Ford  cared  more  than  anything 
to  develop  originality.  But  the  original  essays  written 
in  this  lesson  were  usually  written  around  material  or 
ideas  derived  from  other  lessons  :  one  essay  would 
be  about  a  character  lately  studied  in  history,  another 
upon  the  literary  or  poetic  aspect  of  some  fact  of 
natural  science,  a  third  upon  a  problem  of  everyday 
life  that  had  been  brought  out  in  the  last  lesson  in 
civics.  The  literature  lesson,  more  than  any  (unless 
it  were  the  scripture  lesson),  brought  all  Ford's  teaching 
into  a  common,  human  focus. 

(I  am  necessarily  straying  far  beyond  the  scope  of 
our  first  term's  work,  and  of  the  childish  limitations 
of  Form  I.,  in  this  attempt  at  a  crude  summary  of  Ford's 
time-table.  But  there  is  scarcely  a  point  of  metho<:l 
that  I  have  indicated — though  the  statement  may 
seem  surprising — which  Ford  did  not  apply  during  that; 
first  term,  in  simple  and  elementary  ways,  to  th:; 
actual  and  effective  teaching  of  Form  I.,  a  Form  of  te:i 
and  eleven-year  olds.  It  was  part  of  Ford's  genius  ar. 
a  teacher  to  be  able   to   present  large  schemes  ii 


I 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  171 


emtiryonic  shape,  and  to  bring  the  germs  of  mature 
ideas  into  touch  with  immature  minds.) 

The  afternoon  time-table  varied  more  for  the 
difft  rent  days  of  the  week.  The  first  period,  a  com- 
fort ibly  lengthy  one,  was  given  on  two  days  to  natural 
science,  largely  experimental,  on  two  to  drawing  and 
pair  ting,  and  on  two  to  handwork  of  various  kinds. 
On  ":he  two  latter  afternoons  there  were  games — a  field 
had  been  taken  west  of  Shepherd's  Bush.  Ford  was 
never  a  good  player  of  games — he  never  had  enough 
prac  tice — but  he  was  an  excellent  coach.  On  the  other 
four  days  Form  I.  went  on  to  French  reading  and 
con\'ersation  with  Mme.  Andr6e,  while  Ford  took  the 
kindergarten  in  '  Questions.'  There  followed  lessons  in 
reading  aloud,  recitation  or  acting — incidents  drawn 
fron  history  or  other  studies  being  often  dramatised  by 
the  children ;  and  Miss  Wishart  came  in  to  give  a 
bi-weekly  singing  lesson  with  Ford's  assistance. 

A  volume  might  be  written  about  Ford's  teaching 
of  science.  The  principal  thing  and  the  simplest  thing 
to  te  said  about  it  is  that  he  taught  science  as  a 
whole  and  as  an  outlook  upon  life.^  Form  I.  began 
with  elementary  nature  study,  connected  with  the 
arithmetic,  geography,  and  drawing  lessons — and  to 

^  I  have  outlined  an  adaptation  of  the  scheme,  omitting  many 
fcatuics  that  could  not  be  adopted  in  most  schools  without  a 
revoli  tion  in  method,  in  an  article  entitled  *  School  Science :  the 
Syntletic  Method,'  which  appeared  in  The  Times  Educational 
Supphment  of  3rd  December  19 12,  and  was  the  subject  of  a  leading 
artich  in  The  Times  of  the  same  date. 


172  W.  E.  FORD 

mention .  these  connections  is  to  make  it  clear  that 
*  nature  study,'  in  Ford's  hands,  was  not  only  tlie 
study  of  seedlings  and  tadpoles.  I  will  take  a  single 
instance  from  a  time  when  Form  II.  had  come  into 
being,  a  few  terms  later  on.  The  children's  lessons 
in  world-geography  had  reached  a  stage  in  which  the 
formation  of  land  and  the  wearing-down  of  rock  in^o 
soil  had  been  discussed,  and  different  types  of  country- 
side and  their  vegetable  products  were  being  coii- 
sidered.  Ford  and  I  wrote  to  friends  in  different 
parts  of  England  and  obtained  samples  of  different 
types  of  soil.  These  went  to  the  laboratory,  where  the 
children  of  Form  II.,  working  in  pairs,  and  each  pair 
analysing  one  sample,  proceeded  to  separate  and 
weigh  the  constituents  of  the  different  soils — clay,  sand, 
lime,  organic  matter,  and  so  forth — and  to  note  down 
in  what  quantity  each  constituent  was  present. 

The  notes  from  this  lesson  were  used  as  material 
for  the  next  mathematical  lesson.  Form  II.  was  then 
at  work  upon  proportion  and  percentages,  and  to  work 
out  and  table  the  percentage  composition  of  the 
different  soils  was  an  appropriate  exercise.  In  tlie 
next  science  lesson  the  remainder  of  each  sample  was 
put  into  an  earthenware  pan,  and  each  pan  was  sov  n 
with  the  same  number  of  the  same  typical  seeds  ;  ther  > 
after,  the  pans  of  soil  were  given  strictly  equal  treal- 
ment  in  the  matter  of  moisture,  warmth  and  lighi  ; 
the  seedlings  were  then  measured  at  intervals  aid 
drawn  (of  course  in  the  drawing  lesson)  to  show  how 


I 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  173 


each  appeared  to  like  its  quartei-s.  Finally,  all  the 
recoids  and  notes  were  brought  together  in  a  compo- 
sition lesson,  and  the  members  of  Form  II.  wrote  up 
their  account  of  the  whole  proceeding. 

Tlis  is  a  particularly  plain  and  obvious  example 
of  Ford's  method  in  teaching  elementary  science. 
Its  defect  as  an  instance  is  that  it  is  too  simple  ;  most 
of  the  illustrations  of  his  procedure  that  could  be  cited 
would  give  a  much  fuller  idea  of  the  meaning  that 
science  had  for  him  and  for  those  whom  he  taught. 
But  to  follow  any  of  the  threads  that  were  more 
intri(  ately  woven  into  the  fabric  of  his  teaching,  would 
be  to  make  his  teaching  the  sole  theme  for  the  remainder 
of  th  s  book  ;  if  I  pull  at  any  really  important  thread 
of  th  )ught  in  his  educational  system,  it  is  to  find  that 
half  I  dozen  other  threads  follow,  and  that  these  in 
turn  are  followed  by  a  score  of  fresh  filaments,  all 
essential  to  the  texture.  If  I  were  to  touch,  for  further 
instance,  upon  his  treatment  of  the  much-laboured 
topic  of  flower-fertilisation  as  a  study  conducive  to 
eugeric  realisations,  I  should  be  compelled  to  dis- 
entangle at  great  length  all  the  slight,  fugitive,  but 
carefully  thought-out  and  interrelated  tendencies  in 
his  teaching  towards  a  rational  outlook  upon  the 
subje<:t  of  sex.  Whether  Ford  was  explaining,  with 
carefil  frankness,  some  crude  phrase  in  the  Old  Testa- 
ment, or  touching  upon  the  moral  of  Greek  and  Roman 
decadence,  or  describing  the  pollination  of  flowers, 
he  had  an  ultimate  aim  in  mind  ;  and  towards  this  all 


174  W.  E.  FORD 

his  gradual  allusions  converged.  He  wanted  to  lead 
children  towards  a  right  and  a  natural  understandi]ig 
of  sex — not  to  a  mere  acquaintance,  often  dangerous 
by  itself,  with  natural  facts,  but  to  an  imderstandiiig 
that  would  gradually  put  fact  into  its  proper  relation 
with  feeling,  and  lead  the  later  emotions  of  adolescence 
outward,  not  inward — into  the  world  of  ideals  and  of 
the  creative  imagination,  not  into  the  sensuous 
imaginings  of  constrained,  inward-looking  youth.  But 
this,  though  only  a  single  point  of  Ford's  scientinc 
method  in  its  wider  aspect,  is  one  that  concerns  his 
educational  methodology  rather  than  his  biography. 

It  is  time  to  turn  from  Ford's  system  regarded  as  a 
training  for  the  mind,  and  to  speak  of  its  relation  to 
the  training  of  will  and  character — not  that  the  two 
aspects  can  be  separated,  except  as  a  matter  of  con- 
venience in  description.  It  was  an  essential  point  in 
Ford's  theory  of  education  that  all  training  is  character- 
training,  either  good  or  bad,  and  that  the  teaching 
which  isolates  mind-training  during  any  part  of  tlie 
school  day  is  not  merely  neglecting  the  character  during 
that  time  but  actively  spoiling  it.  This  is  not  to  siy 
that  he  was  continually  harping  upon  morals.  He 
believed  in  leading  children  to  seek  the  truth  of  thii];^s 
for  its  own  sake — in  developing  their  intellectual  con- 
science ;  and  he  believed  that  this  conscience  is 
destroyed  by  any  teaching  that  is  merely  a  men  al 
gymnastic  and  nothing  more. 

I  remember  his  stating  this  view  to  me  in  some  such 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  175 

terms  as  these  :  It  is  part  of  our  business  in  education 
to  aim  at  making  the  world  as  we  see  it  more  hke  the 
world  as  we  think  it  ought  to  be.  There  are  two 
obvious  defects  in  the  world  as  we  see  it :  ignorance, 
and  unreadiness  to  apply  what  knowledge  there  is. 
The  remedy  for  the  first  is  a  wider  spread  of  knowledge, 
and  this  is  often  thought  to  be  the  only  province  of 
education.  But  it  is  of  no  use  to  spread  knowledge 
which  will  only  be  vitiated  by  the  second  defect. 
Peoj  le  who  know  what  to  do  and  are  not  doing  it  have 
a  so  e  spot  in  their  under-consciousness — a  region  of 
fund  imental  insincerity  and  uneasiness. 

Take  the  case  of  the  slums,  he  said.  We  all  know 
enough  by  now  to  have  made  sure  that  slums  ought  to 
be  al)olished,  not  only  as  a  matter  of  human  decency, 
but  i-s  a  matter  of  social  health  and  prosperity.  But 
we  don't  get  it  done.  Ask  any  individual  why  this  is, 
and  ihe  answer  will  be  that  we  can't  see  how  to  set 
abou'  it.  But  it  is  the  will,  not  the  way,  that  is  really 
wanting — or  rather  the  turning  of  the  will  into  an 
effective  channel.  Every  one  cares  about  abolishing 
poverty  except  a  minority  of  profiteering  ruffians  who 
care  ibout  nothing  but  making  money ;  and  even 
these  have  begun  to  see,  from  the  purely  commercial 
point  of  view,  that  the  poverty  and  ill-health  of 
employees  is  a  drag  upon  business.  The  trouble  is 
that  v^e  keep  our  knowledge  and  our  pity  and  even  our 
commercial  wisdom  in  one  pocket,  and  our  will  in 
anoth'T.    We  have  never  had  any  real  practice  in 


^1 


176  W.  E.  FORD 

keeping  our  knowledge  and  our  will  in  touch  with  one 
another.  And  when  it  comes  to  action — such  as  fixing 
a  rate  of  wages,  or  running  up  a  new  block  of  tenements 
in  Bermondsey — sheer,  blind  inertia  keeps  us  as  close 
to  the  bad  old  way  as  possible.  Both  public  opinion 
and  the  law  are  far  ahead  of  our  practice  ;  but  sweating 
goes  on,  and  surveyors  are  still  squared  to  pass  evasions 
of  the  building  regulations. 

Ford's  working  out  of  this  instance  was  typical  of 
liis  method  in  two  ways.  He  saw  the  direction  cf 
social  evolution  as  depending,  always,  upon  the  direc- 
tion in  which  the  pressure  of  individual  wills  was 
turned.  In  the  case  of  poverty  and  slum  life,  the 
pressure  that  kept  them  in  existence  was  blind.  The 
more  enlightened  will — which  exists  all  right,  ho 
maintained — was  unable  to  function  because  it  existed 
only  in  the  air,  and  had  never  been  taught  its  business  ; 
and  the  blind,  primitive  will  had  its  way.  When  this 
state  of  things  was  allowed  to  go  on  for  long  enough, 
revolution  supervened  in  a  healthy  society,  or  decay 
in  an  unhealthy  one.  Revolution  was  the  desperate 
cure  for  evolution  that  had  taken  a  downward  curv( . 
The  only  other  cure  was  to  enable  the  enlightened 
will  of  man  to  exercise  its  natural  upward  pressure-  - 
to  harness  the  balloon  to  the  car,  as  Ford  put  it.  Ui  - 
harnessed,  the  most  enlightened  exponents  of  sociid 
theory  were  only  drifting  gas-bags.  This  idea  of  a 
detached  and  useless  enlightenment  was  fundamental  t  o 
Ford's  explanation  of  our  failure  to  live  up  to  our  ideal  j. 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  177 

This  explanation  was  the  first  typical  point  in  his 
treatment  of  the  slum  instance  ;  it  related  the  par- 
ticular problem  to  a  wide  general  tendency.  The 
second  stage  was  to  work  out  the  particular  means  for 
dealing  with  the  tendency.  Ford  was  not  one  of  the 
educators  who  think  that  education  is  the  only  reform- 
ing power  in  the  world  ;  rather,  he  saw  it  as  one  mode 
of  expression  for  the  general  will  to  reform  ;  but  the 
parti  -ular  '  harness  '  by  which  he  had  chosen  to  con- 
tribu  e  his  own  share  of  reforming  pressure  was  the 
machinery  of  school- work,  and  he  believed  that  that 
machinery  could  do  something  to  make  enlightened 
good\.ill  more  effectual  in  life  than  it  usually  is.  The 
cry,  *  The  evil  that  I  would  not,  that  I  do,'  he  declared 
to  be  the  cry  of  the  miseducated  through  the  ages, 
most  naturally  voiced  by  Paul  the  convert  to  Chris- 
tianity, who  in  his  youth  had  been  brought  up  a 
Pharie  ee. 

Ford  was  convinced  that  no  teaching  could  be 
effect  I  al  for  the  future  which  did  not  enable  a  child 
to  exert  and  to  express  his  own  will  at  every  turn. 
All  th'j  great  educational  prophets,  and  Froebel  the 
most  rotably  of  them  all,  have  insisted  upon  the  need 
of  enlL  ting  a  child's  will  on  behalf  of  learning  ;  Ford, 
I  believe,  was  the  only  practitioner  in  education  who 
clearly  worked  out  the  further  need  of  developing  a 
child's  will  not  only  that  he  may  learn  the  better, 
but  in  ( )rder  that  what  he  learns  may  have  effect  in  his 
after  life.    This  of  course  is  an  aim,  an  ideal,  of  all 

M 


178  W.  E.  FORD 

good  educators  ;  but  I  have  heard  of  none  but  Foid 
whose  method  gave  systematic  expression  to  the  aim. 
To  begin  with,  he  taught  children,  as  do  all  good 
teachers,  to  have  a  philosophy  of  their  own  ;  he  l(id 
them  to  think  over  and  discuss  the  root  principles  of 
every  topic  that  came  up  for  consideration  in  school, 
so  far  as  they  could  work  them  out.  Even  the  kinder- 
garten, in  '  Questions,'  learned  to  formulate  its  simple 
little  conclusions.  He  gave  the  fullest  scope  and  help 
to  the  natural  keenness  of  children  to  get  as  near  to  t]ie 
absolute  truth  of  everything  as  they  can,  and  lie 
encouraged  both  their  will  to  discover  truth  and  their 
ambition  to  excel  themselves,  by  leading  them  to 
realise  how  partial  and  imperfect  was  the  truth  that 
they  had  so  far  discovered — and  how  infinitely  wi<ie 
a  field  still  lay  open,  even  before  the  wisest,  for  further 
discovery.  But  he  did  not  stop  at  thus  elicitiiig 
principles  from  fact.  He  never  carried  theory  into  t  le 
upper  air  of  philosophy  and  left  it  there.  He  always 
brought  the  principle  back  to  earth  again  and  apphed 
it  to  the  facts  and  problems  of  everyday  life.  Thus,  as 
his  youngest  pupils  began  by  learning  to  use  Ihe 
sequence  of  questions.  What  ? — How  ? — Why  ?  as  1  he 
natural  order  of  inquiry  when  one  is  in  pursuit  of  knc  w- 
ledge,  so,  as  they  grew  older,  they  learned  to  use  1  he 
sequence,  Knowledge — Principle — Application.  Tl  ey 
were  encouraged  in  their  natural  tendency  to  keep  th  ;se 
three  elements  distinct  and  in  their  proper  order  :  tliey 
had  first  to  get  at  all  the  available  facts  and  arraiige 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  179 

them  in  true  relation  to  one  another ;  then,  and  only 
then,  to  begin  talking  about  the  principle  governing 
the  relations  between  the  group  of  facts  ;  and  lastly, 
to  apply  the  principle  to  some  practical  problem — if 
possible,  a  problem  concerning  their  own  everyday 
life,  and,  if  possible,  a  problem  which  they  could  solve 
in  a(  tion,  not  only  in  theory. 

Tlius  Ford  aimed  at  building  up  a  habit  of  mind 
thro  igh  which  will  can  function  :  the  sound  habit  of 
a  mind  that,  first,  will  not  rest  content  till  it  has  all 
the  available  facts  marshalled  and  arranged  without 
partiality;  second,  will  not  look  at  the  facts  alone, 
but  H'ill  insist  upon  looking  through  them  to  discover  a 
prin(  iple  :  third,  having  found  a  principle,  will  not 
remain  content  with  that  satisfaction,  but  will  be 
uneaiy  until  it  has  found  a  right  application  for  the 
principle. 

This  is  somewhat  theoretical ;  let  me  give  an 
example  of  the  working  of  the  plan  in  elementary 
schocl-room  practice.  I  will  choose  one  from  my  own 
work  upon  Ford's  model,  to  show  how  far  his  plan  was 
worki.ble  under  a  'prentice  hand.  Form  III.  was  con- 
sideriig  the  government  of  Greek  city-states  in  the 
course  of  their  study  of  elementary  world-history. 
(This  vas  before  a  Fourth  Form  had  come  into  being,  and 
eighteen  months  or  so  after  the  school  had  started  ; 
the  a\'erage  age  of  Form  III.  was  about  thirteen.)  We 
had  collected  the  facts  about  Greek  city-state  govern- 
ment, chiefly  from  Mr.  Warde  Fowler's  book  on  the 


i8o  W.  E.  FORD 

subject,  in  relation  to  the  small  and  manageatde 
numbers  which  the  states  had  to  deal  with,  to  the  Gre(3k 
education  and  love  of  clear  thinking,  and  to  the  fact 
that  slavery  was  part  of  the  Greek  social  order.  Then 
came  the  search  for  simple  principles. 

Slavery,  at  any  rate,  was  wrong  ;  that  point  had  been 
worked  out  in  an  earlier  history  lesson.  But  what  of 
the  comparatively  humane  slavery  practised  by  the 
Greeks  ?  A  child  suggested  that  this  was  better  than 
a  cruel  slavery,  but  not  as  good  as  freedom  for  every- 
body. Wasn't  a  humanely  treated  slave  better  off 
than  a  badly  treated  freeman  ?  Some  one  gained 
kudos  by  observing  that  the  masters  could  be  just  as 
slack  whether  the  slaves  were  well  treated  or  not. 
Slavery,  in  fact,  led  to  '  slackness  ' — almost  the  k  st 
word  in  childish  condemnation — in  any  case,  a.nd 
slackness  meant  the  deterioration  of  a  people.  Slavery 
was  bad,  but  Greek  slavery  was  not  as  bad  as  it  might 
have  been  because  other  things  were  good.  Gresk 
education  was  good  ;  every  one  thought  it  worth  while 
to  know  things  and  to  think  about  them,  so  every  one 
could  help  a  bit  in  thinking  for  the  good  of  the  cily. 
But  also  every  one  could  help  because  there  were  fi!w 
enough  people  for  any  one  to  be  heard  who  had  sor  le- 
thing  important  to  say.  It  was  because  of  gc  od 
education  that  other  people  would  be  ready  to  liste  i ; 
but  also  there  must  be  few  enough  of  them  for  all  to 
hear.  The  special  principle  seemed  to  be,  then,  t]}at 
small  groups  of  people  could  govern  themselves  bet  ( er 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  i8i 

than  big  groups.  Large  nations — in  those  times  at 
any  rate — had  to  be  governed  from  behind  their  backs 
by  autocrats.  This  crude  and  simple  conclusion  was 
subtle  enough  for  the  children  at  that  stage  ;  later  on 
it  would  be  carried  further. 

N'^xt  came  the  search  for  an  application.  Do  small 
groups  govern  themselves  nowadays,  in  England  ? 
The  first  answer  was  No  :  we  are  all  governed  by 
Parliament.  But  weren't  there  small  groups  within 
the  jiation  ?  The  children  could  know  little  as  yet 
about  our  muddle-headed  attempts  at  local  self- 
government,  but  one  suggestion  was  forthcoming : 
parishes.  Was  parish  life  much  hke  city-state  life  ? 
Not  much,  apparently.  We  arrived  at  the  conclusion 
that  the  chief  business  of  a  parish  was  to  look  after  the 
poor,  and  that  it  was  a  good  plan  for  small  groups  of 
peopl  3  to  look  after  their  own  poor — the  circumstances 
would  be  better  understood.  But  who  pays  attention 
to  wl.at  the  parish  is  doing  ?  The  children  did  not 
know  but  they  decided  that  every  one  ought  to. 

At  this  moment  an  idea  occurred  to  one  of  the 
childrin.  The  different  things  that  were  made  in  the 
handv'ork  classes  of  the  school  were  sold  twice  in  the 
year— admiring  parents,  relations,  and  friends  of  the 
manulacturers  were  the  buyers,  but  Ford  saw  to  it 
that  tlie  goods  were  worth  their  price — for  the  benefit 
of  Dr.  Bamardo's  Homes.  Wouldn't  it  be  better — 
this  WIS  the  idea — if  we  paid  some  attention  to  the 
doings  of  our  own  parish  by  devoting  the  profits  of  the 


i82  W.  E.  FORD 

school  sales  of  work  to  parochial  charity  ?  The  rest 
of  Form  III.  was  somewhat  scandalised.  Dr.  Bamardo's 
was  regarded  as  a  school  institution  ;  we  took  pride  in 
the  occasional  reports  that  were  sent  to  us  of  the 
progress  of  waifs  sent  out  to  Canada  through  our 
munificence.  What  was  mere  parochialism  compared 
with  this  ?  Parochialism,  however,  gained  some  groimd 
in  later  discussion,  after  school ;  and  at  the  next 
history  lesson  there  was  a  brief  question  time  before 
entering  upon  the  main  business  of  the  House,  and  it 
was  agreed  that  the  problem  of  local  as  against 
centralised  charity  should  be  referred  to  Ford. 

Ford  discussed  the  matter  in  all  due  solemnity  with 
the  members  of  Form  III.  and  their  history  master,  who 
together  formed  a  deputation  after  morning  school. 
He  pointed  out  that  the  parochialists  of  Form  III. 
were  quite  right — one  ought  to  help  in  local  affairs  ; 
but  that  the  others  were  quite  right  too — one  must  nC't 
neglect  the  wider  issues,  in  a  big  nation  like  this.  He 
suggested  that  the  school  workshop  should  divide  the 
income  from  its  produce  between  Dr.  Bamardo's  ar  d 
some  local  charity  ;  and  from  that  time  forward  this 
was  the  arrangement,  to  the  mutual  satisfaction  )f 
every  one  concerned.  (Ford,  I  happen  to  know,  n^  -t 
wishing  Dr.  Bamardo's  Homes  to  suffer  by  losing  tlie 
half  of  a  school  subscription,  made  up  the  defic  it 
himself,  but  of  this  the  children  in  Form  III.  kne  »v 
nothing.) 

This  apphcation,  by  the  children  themselves,  of  a 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  183 

principle  drawn  from  facts  long  centuries  distant, 
was  perhaps  far-fetched  ;  it  was  only  natural  that  it 
should  be.  But  it  would  be  difficult  to  deny  that  in 
attempting,  however  childishly,  to  apply  the  principle 
of  interest  in  local  affairs  to  their  own  time  and  place, 
the}  gained  a  better  realisation  of  the  human  meaning 
of  a  city-state  ;  or  that  their  potential  value  as  English 
citizens  was  developed  by  their  childish  effort  to 
revalue  the  lesson  of  ancient  Greece.  It  is  easier  to 
laugh  at  the  solemnities  of  childish  idealism  than  to 
train  that  idealism,  in  its  natural,  crude  spontaneity, 
so  that  it  may  eventually  bear  fruit  in  the  world  of 
realities.  But  it  is  very  greatly  worth  while  to  watch 
the  3arly  genesis  of  a  child's  impulse  towards  social 
goodwill,  and  to  try  to  help  a  little  in  enabhng  the 
impi  Jse  to  grow  towards  its  maturer  expression. 

Fcrd  was  equally  keen  on  small  beginnings  in  the 
deta:ls  of  character-training,  and  on  small  beginnings 
that  should  be  positive,  not  negative.  He  believed  that 
faults  of  character  are  both  magnified  and  ingrained 
by  perpetual  '  don't's.'  Lying,  for  instance,  attains 
the  dignity  of  a  crime  for  many  children ;  and  since 
few  people  try  to  imderstand  the  psychology  of  a 
child  sh  lie,  often  an  inevitable  reflex  action  due  to  the 
clumiiness  of  grown-up  questioning,  the  criminal 
charge  is  often  a  thing  of  pure  unreason  to  a  child. 
The  deliberate  lie,  on  the  other  hand,  often  goes 
undetected.    Small  wonder  that  many  children  come 


i84  W.  E.  FORD 

to  regard  lying  as  a  game  of  chance  !  Ford  always 
explained  to  a  child  that  any  fool  can  tell  a  lie  ;  it  is 
the  easy,  unenterprising  thing  to  do — mere  '  slackness.' 
The  clever  thing,  he  would  point  out,  is  to  tell  the  truth 
so  as  to  make  oneself  understood  ;  any  one  can  tell 
a  lie  so  as  to  be  believed  at  the  moment. 

But  a  child  seldom  lied  to  Ford.  The  defensive  lie, 
perhaps  the  commonest  agent  in  undermining  th<j 
childish  sense  of  truth,  was  hardly  ever  set  up  against 
him.  While  he  encouraged  children  to  try  to  make. 
themselves  understood,  he  did  his  part  by  being 
ready  to  understand.  I  remember  his  saying  that  a 
child  lies  in  self-defence  for  two  reasons  :  he  has  don(3 
something  wrong,  and  knows  it,  and  his  civilised  self, 
which  has  now  recovered  control,  resents  being  identi- 
fied with  the  more  primitive  self  which  committed  th(i 
blunder  ;  also,  there  is  allied  to  his  revulsion  from  th(j 
wrong-doing  self  a  sense  of  impending  calamity — of 
grown-up  reprobation  all  ready  to  overwhelm  both  his 
selves  in  a  common  retribution.  In  this  distorted 
moment,  the  truth  about  the  misdemeanour  becomes 
the  lever  that,  if  touched,  would  let  loose  the  flood ; 
and  fear  of  grown-up  misimderstanding  makes  th:; 
civilised  self  of  the  child  cower  down  with  his  primitiv-:: 
self  under  the  easy  protection  of  a  He.  The  fear  is  no( 
in  its  essence  a  fear  of  punishment.  Ford  insisted , 
though  this  is  often  linked  with  it ;  it  is  a  fear  of  op- 
probrium, largely  blind  and  instinctive.  Vestiges  cf 
the  same  vague,  subconscious  fear  occasionally  mak: 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  185 

g^o^^^l-up  people  tell  small  purposeless  lies  without 
beir  g  aware  of  them  until  the  words  are  spoken. 

A  great  part  of  Ford's  secret  as  a  successful  trainer 
of  character  was  that  he  had  foimd  out  how  to  ally 
himself  with  the  higher  will  of  a  child  against  the  lower. 
In  this  particular  case  of  the  defensive  lie,  the  child 
who  came  to  Ford  with  some  misdemeanour  upon  his 
cons:ience,  knew  that  his  more  civilised  self,  already 
in  n  volt  against  the  tyranny  of  the  primitive  criminal 
in  him,  would  find  a  friend  ready  to  help  and  explain. 
It  w  IS  easy  to  tell  the  truth  to  Ford,  because  he  would 
see  it  as  the  truth  and  as  a  thing  to  be  reasoned  about, 
not  iis  an  abhorrent  evil  to  be  made  a  text  for  moral 
reprcbation.  The  keynote  of  Ford's  attitude  towards 
the  }'oung  misdemeanant  was  always,  *  Let 's  see  how 
we  cin  put  this  right.'  The  consequence  of  wrong- 
doing was  not  punishment,  but  an  attempt  at  reparation, 
and  though  the  reparation  might  be  difficult,  it  was 
wiUirgly  undertaken  when  it  was  decreed  by  Ford. 

Til  is  was  not  the  result  of  Ford's  personal  influence 
— of  Ills  '  strong  personality,'  in  the  common  parental 
phrase — ^it  was  the  result  of  his  having  taken  trouble 
to  study  the  nature  of  children,  and  to  gain  their  trust 
by  gradual  degrees  through  showing  that  he  wanted 
to  urdeistand  them,  not  to  condemn.  In  the  par- 
ticular instance  of  defensive  lying,  he  made  the  lie 
impossible,  because  he  had  developed  a  method  to  that 
end.  He  once  gave  me  some  hints  on  the  subject. 
Abov(   all  things,  he  said,  one  must  keep  quiet  and 


i86  W.  E.  FORD 

deliberate.  Any  sign  of  fuss  or  irritation  raises  the 
child's  primitive  fear  of  opprobrium.  Go  slowl}  : 
take  time  to  think  ;  you  will  need  it  yourself,  and  also 
the  child  needs  the  opportimity  to  think  before  he 
speaks,  so  that  he  may  not  commit  himself  rashly  to 
a  sudden  untruth.  Also — here  Ford  was  emphatic — 
look  out  for  the  signs  that  a  hasty  He  is  coming  :  the 
drop  of  the  eyes,  the  catch  of  the  breath  that  tell  of 
mistrust  and  of  a  sudden  resolution  to  risk  the  defensi-v^e 
fiction.  That  is  the  moment  to  interrupt  and  to  talk 
quietly  and  reasoningly.  The  actual  utterance  of  the 
imtruth  must  be  warded  off :  once  it  is  uttered,  pride 
will  come  in  to  prevent  its  withdrawal. 

At  this  point  I  asked  whether  the  catch  of  the  breath 
might  not  equally  indicate  a  sudden  resolution  on  the 
child's  part  to  tell  the  truth — to  make  a  clean  breast 
of  it.  Ford  was  illuminating — as  he  always  was  upc^n 
a  matter  of  practical  detail,  no  less  than  of  general 
theory.  *  Watch  his  eyes,'  he  said.  If  a  child  looks 
down  at  the  outset,  he  is  going  to  lie,  though  he  may 
look  up  at  you  again,  when  the  untruth  is  prepared, 
with  an  appearance  of  the  most  engaging  simplicity. 
The  child  who  is  going  to  tell  the  truth  looks  up  fin;t, 
if  only  for  a  moment :  he  may  gaze  at  his  boots  after- 
wards as  he  stammers  out  his  halting  explanations,  but 
the  one  preliminary  glance  upwards  has  declared  Lis 
sincerity.  I  must  say  that  I  have  never  known  tliis 
test  to  fail. 

To  speak  more  generally  of  Ford's  scheme  of  chj.r- 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  187 

act  er-training,  he  believed  strongly  in  making  children 
conscious  of  the  primitive  barbarian  that  still  lurks 
in  civilised  humanity,  as  well  as  of  their  higher  nature 
that  has  to  master  the  barbarian  element.  He 
believed  that  most  moral  training  is  lopsided — it 
d\v3lls  upon  ideals  and  rules  of  conduct  without  explain- 
ing to  a  child  the  difficulties  in  his  own  nature  that  he 
will  have  to  encounter  in  applying  them.  The  natural, 
hei  Ithy  barbarian  in  a  child  is  usually  treated  upon 
the  principle  of  letting  sleeping  dogs  he  :  though  some 
outlet,  merely  physical  as  a  rule,  is  allowed  for  the 
exercise  of  *  animal  spirits,'  in  order  that  these  may 
remain  temporarily  quiescent  in  the  times  between. 
Th(  •  fact  that  the  ethics  of  primitive  man — '  a  scratch- 
ing yeUing,  grabbing,  envying  individualist,'  as  Ford 
once  described  him — are  only  partially  submerged  in 
childhood,  is  a  fact  of  human  natural  history  which  he 
refused  to  neglect  in  the  training  of  character.  The 
usuil  way,  he  said,  is  blindly  to  suppress  the  barbarian 
spirit — to  express  oneself,  often  quite  insincerely,  as 
sho  :ked  and  horrified  whenever  it  emerges,  and  hastily 
to  I  ush  it  under  again  by  a  show  of  moral  indignation  ; 
and  this  is  as  great  a  mistake  as  blindly  to  allow  it 
free  play. 

Ford  drew  from  his  own  short  experience  as  a 
schcolboy,  as  well  as  from  his  keen  and  intuitive 
obsdvation  of  children,  a  truth  which  most  of  us 
can  verify  from  our  recollections  of  childhood,  and 
perhaps  in  some  degree  from  our  adult  experience  : 


i88  W.  E.  FORD 

that  children,  and  in  some  degree  grown-ups  as  well, 
have  an  uneasy  sense  at  the  back  of  their  mind  of  being 
the  most  appalling  moral  humbugs  in  relation  to  the 
superior  moral  standards  of  those  around  them.  This, 
Ford  was  sure,  is  altogether  a  bad  thing.  It  leads 
either  to  morbidities  of  conscience,  the  child  regarding 
himself  as  a  hopeless  sinner,  or,  in  children  of  more 
robust  nature,  to  the  determined  crushing-under  c>f 
a  conscience  that  has  become  so  pessimistic  a  com.- 
panion.  In  the  one  case  the  result  is  hypertroph}', 
in  the  other  atrophy,  of  conscience. 

His  method  of  avoiding  both  evils  was  to  teach  the 
facts  of  our  mixed  inheritance,  in  connection  both 
with  world-history  and  with  simple  evolutionary 
science.  These  are  big  words  when  one  thinks  of  small 
children,  but  Ford  proved  that  the  teaching  could  be 
effectual  through  the  stories  of  human  and  animal  Hie 
that  were  the  small  beginnings  for  a  knowledge  of 
history  and  of  evolution.  He  developed  in  children  a 
consciousness  of  the  barbarian  in  themselves,  not  as  a 
mysterious  and  an  almost  obscene  monster  to  ho 
shamefacedly  suppressed,  but  as  a  cousin  of  the  cave- 
dweller  and  the  ape,  a  creature  that  needed  to  b(i 
trained  and  taught  its  manners  so  that  it  might  becomi; 
fit  for  civilised  society.  But  he  made  this  consciousness^ 
outward-looking ;  he  had  no  desire  to  train  up  intrc  - 
spective  children.  When  he  was  talking  about  th;i 
character  of  an  Israelite  or  a  Norman  king,  he  woul  ;1 
speak  of  it  in  terms  of  the  man's  mixed  nature,  and  c  f 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  189 

his  success  or  failure  in  controlling  or  being  dominated 
by  his  under-self.  He  led  children  at  every  turn,  by 
methods  simple  or  more  mature  according  to  their 
sta^e  of  development,  to  look  out  upon  the  whole 
phenomenon  of  character  and  conduct  as  a  question 
of  the  relation  between  the  higher  and  the  more 
primitive  natures  of  man. 

This  part  of  Ford's  method  in  character  training 
relates  only  to  one  point  in  that  important  and  little- 
stu(Ued  art ;  but  it  was  the  point  upon  which  he  laid 
mo^t  stress  in  discussing  method  with  us  who  taught  in 
the  school — with  Mme.  Andree  and  myself  in  the  first 
instance,  and  later  with  his  larger  staff.  He  believed 
thai  systematic  handling  of  the  main  natural  difficulty 
in  t]  aining  character  had  always  been  unduly  neglected 
in  education,  and  that  a  confusion  between  morals 
and  natural  history  has  always  been  a  bar  to  clear- 
headed teaching.  But  he  was  far  from  making  natural 
history  explain  morals  out  of  existence  ;  rather,  he 
strengthened  morals  by  bringing  them  into  connection 
with  reason.  The  moral  responsibility  of  his  children 
was  the  more  absolute  because  they  knew  better  than 
most  children  what  self-control  ought  to  mean. 

Be  sides  this  self-control  of  the  individual,  there  was 
the  ([uestion  of  the  individual  child's  obedience  to  the 
conti  ol  of  the  teacher,  and  of  the  necessary  laws  of  the 
school  community.  Here  Ford  made  application  of 
principles  that  are  well  known  to  the  comparatively 
few  >/ho  study  the  work  and  the  teachings  of  the  great 


igo  W.  E.  FORD 

educators  of  the  past .  He  believed  in  education  through 
freedom,  and  for  freedom,  but  he  knew  that  the  only 
real  liberty  is  social  hberty — the  harmony  of  freedori 
with  obedience  that  comes  of  an  understanding  consent 
to  the  control  of  a  reasonable  law.^  Ford's  chief 
contribution  to  method  for  education  in  freedom  was 
to  insist  upon  the  development  by  teachers  of  some- 
thing which  he  called  '  the  technique  of  praise.'  Our 
guiding  principle,  he  said,  was  that  a  thing  well  done 
and  spontaneously  was  of  far  greater  educational 
value  than  a  thing  well  done  under  constraint.  Con- 
straint was  necessary  in  so  far  as  one  had  not  yet 
secured  the  spontaneitjr ;  but  it  was  a  second-best — 
a  confession  of  weakness.  And  constraint  ultimately 
rested  upon  punishments.  A  punishment  was,  as  it 
were,  a  push  from  behind.  Quite  an  elaborate  technique 
of  punishment  had  been  worked  out  by  the  teaching 
profession — all  of  it  unsatisfactory,  because  punishment 
is  in  itself  an  unsatisfactory  method.  But  if  we  dis- 
liked, as  all  teachers  dislike,  this  clumsy  and  un- 
satisfactory push  from  behind,  why  had  we  not 
developed  a  method  of  puUing  from  the  front  ? 

A  member  of  the  staff  (I  am  quoting  from  my  recol- 
lection of  a  staff  meeting)  complained  that  Ford  had 
done  away  with  the  means  to  that  end — marks  and 
prizes.  Ford  explained  once  more  his  view  that  the:  e 
is  a  special  faculty  for  accumulating  marks,  passirg 

*  I  have  dealt  with  the  historical  development  of  this  idea  n 
The  Permanent  Values  in  Education.     (Constable,  191 7.) 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  191 

examinations  and  winning  prizes,  which  has  very  Httle 
rela  ion  to  the  genuine  educational  values.  Those 
who  achieve  academic  success  are  seldom  those  who 
make  a  success  of  life.  One  cannot  measure  a  child's 
quality  in  the  quantitative,  numerical  language  of 
mar  cs  ;  and  in  trying  to  do  so,  one  actually  measures 
som' thing  akin  to,  but  different  from,  the  faculty  for 
amassing  money — some  talent  for  gathering  and 
hoarding,  in  its  essence  a  form  of  greed.  This  is  not 
the  right  incentive  to  learning ;  it  is  an  ulterior 
motive  ;  and,  worse,  a  wrong  ulterior  motive. 

Tie  real  motive  for  aspiring  to  wisdom  and  goodness. 
Ford  proceeded  to  urge,  is,  simply,  wisdom  and  good- 
ness for  their  own  sake  ;  but  children  do  need  some 
test  ( )f  their  own  advance — ^some  recognition  from  out- 
side 1  o  reassure  their  own  inner  consciousness  that  their 
reasonable  self-approbation  when  they  have  done  well 
is  not  misplaced.  Marks  are  a  clumsy  and  an  ineffectual 
form  of  recognition.  They  put  a  premium  upon  the 
facile,  shallow,  easily  adaptable  mind.  And  there  is 
an  older,  a  more  natural  and  fundamental  reaching- 
out  cf  the  childish  consciousness  for  recognition  of 
childish  effort :  the  sane  and  simple  desire  of  child- 
hood for  praise  when  praise  is  due.  Ford  warmed  to 
his  St  bject.  How  far,  he  asked  us  (I  paraphrase  his 
words,  of  course),  do  we  try  to  make  our  praise  expres- 
sive a  nd  effectual  ?  Our  encouragement  of  a  child's 
fforts ,  when  we  can  see  them  to  be  sincere  and  pains- 
taking, ought  always  to  be  articulate  and  inspiring. 


192  W.  E.  FORD 

The  hope  of  our  discriminating  praise  ought  to  be  a  iar 
stronger  incentive  for  a  child  than  the  fear  of  our 
clumsy  punishments.  If  we  could  only  learn  to  praise 
rightly.  Ford  concluded,  there  might  be  a  hope  that 
punishments  would  become  altogether  unnecessary. 
The  need  for  the  clumsy  push  from  behind,  in  fact, 
might  vanish,  if  only  the  pull  from  before  were  made 
effectual. 

Eventually,  Ford  practically  abolished  punishments 
from  the  school.  He  made  it  a  rule  that  every  case  of 
insubordination,  idleness,  or  other  cause  of  reprobation 
should  be  referred  directly  to  himself ;  and  when  he 
had  talked  over  the  difficulty  with  the  child  who  was 
at  fault  there  was  seldom  any  need  for  punitive 
retribution.  Generally  there  was  at  the  root  of  the 
trouble  some  misunderstanding  between  the  child  and 
the  teacher ;  certainly  this  was  always  the  case  with 
any  child  whom  I  myself '  sent  up.'  Ford  could  always 
see  that  I  had  made  a  mistake  somewhere,  and  could 
tell  me  what  was  wrong ;  usually  I  had  failed  to  make 
the  child  see  what  he  should  be  aiming  at,  and  had 
stupidly  tried  to  exercise  the  blind  '  push  from  behind.' 
In  so  far  as  the  child,  too,  had  been  in  the  wrong,  Fc  rd 
brought  into  play  his  customary  principle  of  exacting, 
not  retribution,  but  reparation  ;  and  I  often  had  a 
recalcitrant  pupil  return  from  his  talk  with  Ford  f  ill 
of  apologies  and  promises  of  amendment.  The 
apologies,  by  the  time  Ford  had  done  with  the  two  of 
us,  were  usually  mutual. 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  193 

I  had  known  Ford,  and  had  learned  to  trust  him, 
through  many  years.  Some  of  my  colleagues,  in  the 
later  development  of  the  school,  did  not  know  him, 
and  could  not  trust  him  when  it  came  to  maintenance 
of  i.  child's  rights  and  dignities  against  their  own. 
Thi^  was  one  of  the  reasons  for  the  failure  of  as  hopeful 
an  ( ducational  experiment  as  has  ever  been  made  in 
Eng  and. 


CHAPTER  IX 

It  has  been  said,  and  with  a  certain  amount  of  truth, 
that  a  headmaster  can  keep  on  good  terms  with  liis 
school  or  with  his  staff,  but  not  with  both.  Ford's 
staff  approved  of  his  methods  of  teaching  and  worked 
hard  to  apply  them,  but  there  was  something  in  liis 
wider  attitude  towards  education  that  seemed  in- 
evitably to  rouse  a  certain  kind  of  mistrust.  Put  in 
simple  terms,  the  feeling  was  that  his  system  as  a 
whole  would  make  children  too  good  to  live.  Different 
forms  of  this  fundamental  misgiving  were  continually 
cropping  up  at  staff  meetings,  in  relation  to  one  detail 
after  another  of  educational  practice.  I  do  not  want, 
in  this  matter,  to  indulge  in  retrospective  criticism  of 
those  who  were  my  colleagues  in  the  carrying  out  of 
Ford's  work  ;  the  principle  underlying  their  uneasiness 
was  sincerely  held,  and  patiently  discussed  with  Ford 
in  all  its  protean  shapes. 

It  would  be  a  somewhat  technical  business  to  mc  ke 
this  deeply  rooted  difference  of  opinion  clear  by  trac:  ng 
its  subtle  influence  through  a  description  of  a  typi  al 
staff-meeting  discussion  of  school  method ;  and  he 
objection  which  Ford  had  so  continually  to  ans^ve^ 
was  best  and  most  simply  put  into  words  by  l.Ir. 

191 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  195 

Wis  hart,  during  an  after-dinner  talk.  Ford  and  I  had 
gon  3  to  dine  with  Mr.  and  Miss  Wishart  after  one  of  the 
weekly  staff  meetings  at  the  school ;  Mr.  Wishart, 
occa  sionally  present  at  staff -meetings  (where  he  would 
dro])  out  a  common  sense  suggestion  from  time  to  time, 
never  without  its  value),  had  on  that  occasion  been 
away,  as  was  more  usual.  We  were  at  about  the 
mid  He  of  the  school's  third  term  ;  the  twenty-two 
children  gathered  in  by  the  end  of  the  first  term  had 
beer  increased  to  thirty-three  ;  there  were  four  forms 
(kindergarten,  Forms  la  and  lb,  and  Form  II.),  and 
two  more  trained  teachers,  a  master  and  a  mistress, 
had  brought  the  staff,  with  Ford,  up  to  five.  The  two 
new(  r  members  and  Mme.  Andree  had  been  giving 
voic(  that  afternoon  to  their  searchings  of  spirit  over 
seveial  of  the  details  in  Ford's  treatment  of  current 
problems  ;  and  Ford,  as  we  sat  with  our  coffee  in  the 
Wish  arts'  drawing-room,  was  talking  about  his  diffi- 
culty in  seeing  what  was  the  obstacle,  exactly,  at  which 
they  always  appeared  to  pull  up  short. 

'  People  generally  pull  up  when  they  can't  see  where 
you  '  -e  leading  them,'  suggested  Mr.  Wishart ;  and  he 
went  on  to  say,  in  effect,  that  there  was  something  in 
Ford' 5  system  that  puzzled  him,  and  that  perhaps  it 
woulcL  be  this  that  disquieted  the  three  teachers,  though 
they  might  not  quite  know  it.  He  was  more  outside 
the  s<  hool ;  they,  very  likely,  couldn't  see  the  wood 
for  th3  trees,  and  could  only  jib  at  this  and  that  detail. 
His  trouble  was  that  he  couldn't  see  what  was  to 


196  W.  E.  FORD 

become  of  Ford's  pupils,  eventually,  in  the  knock-abc»ut 
conditions  of  the  everyday  world.  It  wasn't  that  he 
was  afraid  they  would  be  soft ;  but  he  was  afraid  they 
would  be  too  fine.  Ford  was  teaching  them  to  think 
about  what  is  right,  he  said,  with  a  humorous  sugges- 
tion of  disapproval  in  his  tone.  While  a  man  is  think- 
ing about  what  is  right,  he  added,  other  folk  march 
along  and  trample  over  him.  Did  he  mean,  Fcrd 
inquired,  that  they  ought  to  know  how  to  tram]Dle 
back  ?  Mr.  Wishart  wouldn't  go  so  far  as  to  say  that ; 
but  it  was  something  of  the  sort,  he  admitted,  that  he 
had  in  mind.  Not  exactly  trampling  ...  no  ;  rather 
the  kind  of  spirit  that  could  resist  trampling. 

'  But  aren't  we  trying  to  get  that  ?  '  Ford  put  in. 
Was  not  the  spirit  of  real  thought — the  reflective  spirit 
— exactly  the  spirit  that  would  end  its  reflections  by 
refusing  to  be  trodden  upon  ?  Mr.  Wishart  was  still 
doubtful.  The  point  that  he  wanted  to  raise  was 
whether  the  reflective  spirit  that  Ford  was  training  up 
would  not  reflect  for  too  long — and  find  out  that  while 
it  had  been  reflecting  others  had  been  acting,  and 
monopoHsing  the  first  and  the  best  chances. 

Ford  was  not  forgetting,  he  reminded  us,  that 
reflection  has  to  result  in  action.  The  children  w<  re 
learning  that  all  right ;  and  his  own  idea  was  that 
sensible  reflection  would  result  in  better  concei\  ed 
action.  But  this  was  just  the  point  upon  which  lEr. 
Wishart  took  him  up.  His  whole  doubt  was  whetlier 
Ford's^spirit  of  reflection  might  not  be  a  snare  and  a 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  197 

delusion  from  the  practical  point  of  view.  It  was  a 
fine  thing  in  itself,  but  it  only  existed  for  itself.  If  you 
began  reflecting,  in  a  philosophical  way,  you  went  on 
refle:ting — for  the  sake  of  an  intellectual  satisfaction. 
You  thought  for  the  sake  of  thinking  ;  and  then  you 
got  overtaken  by  the  man  who  thinks  for  the  sake  of 
business. 

Fcrd  gave  a  thoughtful  pause  to  this.  *  You 're 
perfectly  right,  Mr.  Wishart,'  he  said  at  last.  That 
standpoint,  he  went  on,  was  entirely  reasonable  and 
cohei  ent.  But  honestly,  which  was  the  better  type — 
the  man  who  thinks  for  the  sake  of  thought,  or  the 
man  who  thinks  for  the  sake  of  business  ?  Was  not 
the  one  in  search  of  the  spiritual  reality,  and  the  other 
only  m  search  of  the  material  ? 

But  we  have  to  live  by  the  material ;  this  was  Mr. 
Wishart's  objection — and  that  was  the  fault  that  he 
found  with  Ford's  system.  It  was  a  grand  system, 
but  he  was  afraid  of  its  becoming  altogether  too 
spiritual. 

Miss  Wishart  looked  up  quickly  from  her  needle- 
work. '  Can  anything  be  too  spiritual  ?  '  she  asked 
quietly.  Ford,  too,  had  looked  up  at  the  sound  of  her 
voice,  and  their  eyes  met  for  a  moment. 

'  Ycu  're  right,  Margaret,'  said  Mr.  Wishart.  Per- 
haps, he  went  on,  he  should  not  have  said  *  too 
spiritual.'  Perhaps  he  had  meant,  rather,  too  meta- 
physic  U.  Ford  characterised  this  as  a  really  valuable 
piece  (f  criticism.    Mr.  Wishart  meant,  he  suggested, 


198  W.  E.  FORD 

that  he  tended  to  encourage  thinking  just  for  the  sake 
of  thinking — just  for  the  enjoyment  of  the  process — 
instead  of  for  the  spirit  of  truth  which  ought  to  be 
behind  the  thought. 

Mr.  Wishart  confessed  that  he  had  had  the  notion 
in  his  mind ;  but  he  could  see  that  it  was  not  tnie. 
It  was,  he  saw,  the  spirit  behind  that  Ford  wanted  to 
bring  out.  And  it  was  a  fine  spirit — but  it  was  just 
its  fineness  that  he  was  afraid  of.  He  would  grant  f ree  ly 
that  it  was  right,  .  .  . 

'  And  will  you  grant  me  that  it  is  its  rightntss 
that  you  're  afraid  of  ?  *  asked  Ford,  quietly  inter- 
rupting. 

Mr.  Wishart  would  grant  even  that,  in  a  sense.  He 
could  see  where  Ford  was  driving  him.  Ford  did  not 
think,  he  said,  that  any  one  can  be  too  right ;  so  he 
was  driving  him  on  to  put  what  is  practical  before 
what  is  right.  Well,  his  defence  was  that  nothing  is 
right  imless  it  is  practical  as  well. 

Ford  wholly  agreed,  but  objected  that  they  were 
beginning  to  argue  in  a  circle.  Suppose  he.  Ford, 
stood  out  for  training  children  in  pure  Tightness  of 
thought — what  was  Mr.  Wishart 's  objection  ? 

Mr.  Wishart's  objection  was,  in  essence,  that  Ford 
would  then  be  training  up  a  race  of  intellectual  mart}  rs. 
These  young  thinkers  of  his  were  bound  to  suffe  — 
terribly. 

Ford  took  leave  to  doubt  it.  They  were  not  grow  ng 
up  into  such  pure,  immitigated  thinkers  as  Mr.  Wishart 


I 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  199 


imagined.  They  were  learning  to  make  their  thinking 
practical — learning  how  to  'get  ahead,'  even  in 
business.  But — suppose  for  the  sake  of  argument  that 
they  all  had  to  become  martyrs  in  the  cause  of  truth — 
wh  it  then  ? 

1  hen,  in  Mr.  Wishart's  drily  expressed  opinion,  their 
parents  would  consider  themselves  to  have  been 
extinsively  swindled.  Parents  wanted  their  children 
taught  to  be  successes,  not  picturesque  failures. 
Peihaps,  Ford  allowed,  that  is  what  parents  think 
they  want.  But  he  insisted  that  what  they  really 
want,  if  they  are  decent  parents,  is  that  their  children 
ma  /  be  good — clever  afterwards,  and  successful  after 
tha:,  if  fortune  is  favourable  ;  but  good,  whatever  may 
happen  to  them  in  consequence. 

^liss  Wishart  looked  up  again,  and  again  met  Ford's 
eyes.  Then  she  looked  at  her  father.  What  the 
chiliren  wanted,  she  said,  was  just  goodness,  whether 
the  parents  or  the  teachers  really  wanted  it  for  them 
or  not.  That  was  her  own  reason  for  thinking  that 
Ford  was  in  the  right. 

^]r.  Wishart  gave  a  businesslike  sigh.  On  reflection 
he,  too,  was  afraid  that  Ford  was  right.  The  children 
had  to  concentrate  on  goodness — and  then  dree  their 
weiid.  Ford  was  not  going  to  accept  this  judgment 
without  quaUfication.  The  'weird,'  he  was  certain, 
would  not  prove  so  fateful  as  Mr.  Wishart  imagined. 
He  slyly  suggested  that  what  Mr.  Wishart  was  really 
afraid  of  was   not  goodness,  but   unco'  guidness — a 


200  W.  E.  FORD 

quality    which   he    had    no    intention    whatever   of 
encouraging. 

I  was  not  wholly  surprised  to  learn,  a  week  or  two 
later,  that  Ford  and  Miss  Wishart  were  to  be  married 
as  soon  as  the  summer  holidays  began.  There  had 
been  indications  which  even  a  young  teacher,  fresh  in 
enthusiasm  for  his  art,  was  too  human  to  pass  by 
without  a  sapient  glance.  I  had  felt  sure  of  it ;  and  I 
was  glad  when  the  definite  news  came.  Ford's  happi- 
ness was  beautiful  to  see  ;  and  since  happiness,  to 
him,  was  a  thing  that  naturally  translated  itself  into 
inspired  work,  he  seemed  somehow  to  infect  the  school, 
children  and  staff  ahke,  with  the  radiant  enthusiasm 
that  overflowed  from  him.  It  was  as  though  the  school 
itself  were  in  love. 

Ford  and  his  wife  left  for  Normandy  early  in  August 
1905.  I  had  acted  as  best  man  at  their  simple  wedding; 
— only  the  Wisharts  and  a  few  near  friends  wertj 
present — and  in  a  few  days  I  had  a  letter  from  Ford 
referring,  in  the  first  instance,  to  my  carrying  out  that 
office  : — 

EvREux,  Aug.  6,  1905. 
Dear  K., — I  never  thanked  you  for  your  efficienl: 
steersmanship,  while  if  it  hadn't  been  for  you  I' 
might  have  gone  to  the  wrong  church  and  married 
the  wrong  lady,  and  been  carried  off  for  all  I  know 
to  Mentone  or  even  Monte  Carlo  !  Expect  no  senS' 
from  me  ;  I  am  countless  centuries  old  to-day,  and 
much  too  wise  to  talk  sense  ;  also  I  am  an  infan: 
and  inarticulate.     Margaret  (I  haven't  learnt  to 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  201 

say  *  my  wife  '  yet — it 's  the  thought  of  that  phrase 
that  drives  men  to  go  honeymooning  abroad — and 
anyhow  I  shan't  use  it  to  you)  says  she  caught  you 
looking  very  end-of-a-chapterish  just  before  we 
went  off.  Remember  I  'm  not  going  to  stand  any 
beastly  pride  from  you  when  we  come  back — the 
aew  chapter  begins  exactly  where  the  old  one  left 
Dff. — Yours  ever,  W.  E.  F. 

Mr.  and  Mrs.  Ford  came  home  full  of  plans  for 
*  CO  npleting  the  circle,'  as  Ford  put  it,  of  the  school's 
life.  They  had  talked  over  at  length  the  difficulty 
whi  :h  Ford  had  begun  to  experience  in  getting  the 
staf  to  go  with  him  whole-heartedly,  and  also  the 
comparative  failure  of  the  school,  in  most  cases,  to 
win  the  co-operation  of  the  parents  ;  and  they  had 
grea  t  hopes  that  under  the  new  menage  a  more  effectual 
mee.ing  of  minds  would  be  possible.  Ford  spoke  to 
me  of  their  conclusions  soon  after  their  return.  He 
had  taken  very  seriously  the  tentative  phrase  to  which 
Mr.  Wishart's  criticism — identical,  we  believed,  with 
the  subconscious  criticism  of  the  staff — had  reduced 
itseli .  It  was  perfectly  true,  he  said,  that  his  contact 
with  us  all,  children,  staff  and  parents,  had  been  '  too 
metaphysical.'  His  own  instinct  always  was  to  search 
out  z  nd  explain  the  philosophy  of  school  work,  and  to 
be  satisfied  when  he  had  done  so  and  also  translated 
the  philosophy  into  effective  practice.  With  children, 
this  f  ucceeded  perfectly.  All  children  are  bom  philo- 
soph(  rs,  if  by  a  philosopher  we  understand  one  who 


202  W.  E.  FORD 

loves  to  search  out  the  nature  and  the  causes  of  things, 
and  not  necessarily  to  explain  them  in  complicated 
and  abstract  language.  Ford's  philosophy  for  the 
young  was  sufficiently  concrete  and  practical,  as  h:s 
method  of  teaching  them  to  apply  every  principle  to 
everyday  hfe  clearly  evinces  ;  but  he  was  not  at  this 
time  quite  satisfied  in  his  own  mind  about  his  teaching 
system.  Might  it  not  be,  after  all,  *  too  metaphysical ' 
— too  closely  dependent  upon  intellect — tending  too 
much  to  isolate  intellect  ?  He  thought  that  perhaps 
he  was  neglecting  the  direct  simplicities  of  approach 
to  a  child's  mind  through  feelings  and  instincts. 

I  do  not  think  he  was  right  in  this  idea,  as  far  as  he 
himself  was  concerned  ;  he  taught  through  feelings 
and  instincts  more  than  he  knew.  Possessing  the 
'  strong  personality '  so  much  desiderated  by  Mrs.  A. 
and  Mrs.  B.,  he  felt  the  need  to  keep  it  in  the  back- 
ground. It  shone  through  his  work  strongly  enough 
whatever  he  was  doing.  But  I  think  it  was  true,  as  I 
haltingly  tried  to  explain  to  him,  that  the  intellectual 
harness  in  which  he  kept  himself  might  be  heavy  for 
those  who  were  working  with  him.  His  method 
without  himself  tended  to  become  too  abstract  in  a 
teacher's  mind ;  and  the  teacher,  as  was  natural, 
instinctively  laid  the  blame  upon  the  method.  Fo  d 
said  that  this  instinct  was  not  only  natural,  bit 
perfectly  just.  It  was  his  business  to  arrange  method 
so  that  it  would  work  in  other  hands  than  his  own. 
In  so  far  as  it  became  artificial  to  the  staff,  and  l^d 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  203 

them  to  think  that  he  wanted  the  children  taught  to 
be  too  exclusively  philosophical,  it  was  wrong  method, 
and  needed  recasting — ^simpHfying.  I  was  angry  at 
this  self -accusation.  Ford's  method,  I  felt,  was  too 
fini;  a  thing  to  be  watered  down  to  suit  teachers  who 
wo  ild  not  make  the  effort  to  understand  it ;  and  I 
blurted  out  something  to  this  effect.  Ford  said  that 
better  understanding  was  what  he  chiefly  hoped  for, 
no\/.  Mrs.  Ford  would  be  able  to  help.  We  must 
thaw  some  of  the  professional  frigidity  out  of  the  staff 
meetings.  A  drawing-room,  and  the  comfortable  per- 
vasiveness of  afternoon  tea,  would  do  a  good  deal. 
I  took  in  the  implication  that  Mrs.  Ford's  particular 
gift  in  conversation — her  power  of  quietly  stating 
an  issue  in  its  simplest  human  terms — would  do  a  good 
dea.  more. 

The  influence  of  a  drawing-room,  and  of  its  presiding 
mistress,  was  to  have  its  effect,  too,  upon  the  relation 
bet\veen  the  school  and  the  parents.  '  They  are  always 
on  their  hind  legs  with  me,'  Ford  observed.  It  was 
tnit  that  he  had  never  overcome  the  tendency  of  most 
of  tiie  parents  to  stand  upon  the  defensive  with  him. 
The/  thought  him  *  so  clever,'  and  were  afraid  to  give 
theiiselves  away.  Mrs.  Ford  was,  actually,  of  the 
greatest  possible  help  in  getting  the  school  and  the 
parents  upon  easy  terms.  Both  in  this  and  in  pro- 
mot  ng  the  education  of  the  staff,  her  presence  was  a 
sour:e  of  strength  for  the  more  difficult  time  that 
lay  ihead — the  time  when  Ford's  system  would  have 


204  W.  E.  FORD 

to  struggle  to  make  good  its  hold  upon  children  of  an 
age  to  have  their  careers  seriously  considered  and  to 
be  sent  off,  in  the  interest  of  their  careers,  to  go  through 
the  conventional  scholastic  mill. 

The  year  that  succeeded  Ford's  marriage  was  a  year 
of  quiet,  happy  work  with  everything  going  well. 
Numbers  increased,  and  the  school  extended  upwards 
into  three  new  forms,  with  a  corresponding  increase  of 
staff.  Mr.  Wishart's  plan  for  the  gradual,  tentative 
introduction  of  co-education  had  worked  admirably ; 
Ford's  was  known  and  recognised  by  this  time  as  a 
*  boys-and-girls*  school,  and  no  one  appeared  to  think 
the  fact,  thus  gradually  accomplished,  anything  but 
right  and  natural.  The  children  were  reaching  an 
age,  however,  when  the  girls'  work  began  to  diverge 
from  the  boys'  in  a  few  practical  subjects,  and  it  was 
a  good  thing  that  a  mistress  of  the  house  should  be 
at  the  head  of  these  activities.  Mrs.  Ford  had  not 
made  a  technical  study  of  domestic  economy,  but  she 
had  managed  a  good-sized  household  with  Scottish 
thriftiness,  and  could  teach  from  experience  rather  than 
from  theory. 

I  believe  it  was  Mrs.  Ford  who  sensed  a  personal 
feeling  at  the  root  of  that  uneasiness  on  the  part  of  the 
staff  which  Ford  and  Mr.  Wishart  had  identified  only 
with  an  impersonal  soHcitude  for  the  children.  Ford's 
system  was  not  rigid ;  every  teacher  was  called  upon 
to  make  an  individual  contribution  to  its  working,  and 
to  think  and  plan  for  its  reaUsation  in  detail  and  for 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  205 

the  linking-up  of  its  parts  ;  but  it  was  very  definitely 
Ford's  system  all  the  time — if  only  because  Ford 
thought  and  planned  very  much  more  effectually  than 
the  rest  of  us.  This  made  some  of  the  staff  feel  that 
they  had  less  control  than  was  their  due  ;  and  the 
feeling  was  accentuated  by  Ford's  scheme  of  having 
eve  y  difficulty  of  discipline  referred  directly  to  himself. 
In  'X)th  cases  we  all  knew  that  Ford  was  right :  his 
system  of  teaching  would  have  gone  to  pieces  if  any 
of  us  had  been  able  to  fly  off  at  a  tangent  upon 
any  method  of  our  own,  regardless  of  the  need  to 
imify  the  whole ;  and  the  plain  fact  that  Ford,  by 
takiig  all  matters  of  discipline  into  his  own  hands, 
had  done  away  with  the  continual  drizzle  of  small, 
futil  i  punishments  that  usually  disfigures  the  work  of 
a  scl  lool,  was  enough  to  prevent  any  one  from  wanting 
their  individual  control  back  in  that  respect.  But  it  is 
possible  both  to  see  that  a  thing  is  right,  and  to  resent  it. 
The  continual  hankering  of  the  staff  for  a  system  of 
marks  and  prizes  was  partly  an  expression  of  their 
desire  to  wield  some  symbol  of  personal  authority. 
Ford  wanted  all  control,  including  his  own,  to  be  as 
impe  -sonal  as  possible — as  much  as  possible  an  appeal 
to  the  children's  own  desire  for  the  best,  both  as 
individuals  and  as  a  community.  But  he  recognised 
that  something  in  the  nature  of  a  Votes  for  Teachers 
agital  ion  was  at  the  back  of  the  staff's  mind,  and  tried 
to  work  out  a  right  answer  to  the  inarticulate  demand. 
He  h  t  upon  a  new  system  of  marks  and  prizes  in 


2o6  W.  E.  FORD 

consequence.  At  the  end  of  a  term  every  teacher  was 
to  make  a  list  of  children  who  had  done  thoroughly 
well,  in  that  teacher's  opinion,  in  one  subject  or 
another.  Ford  carefully  explained  that  we  were  not 
necessarily  to  put  down  the  name  of  a  child  who  could 
be  considered  as  *  top  of  the  Form  '  in  a  particular 
subject,  but  of  the  child  who  seemed  to  have  worked 
the  hardest  and  to  have  made  the  most  progress  con- 
sidering his  capabilities.  To  be  mentioned  in  this 
way  upon  a  teacher's  end-of-term  list  was  to  receive 
one  vote  towards  a  *  progress  prize ' ;  this  prize,  in 
each  Form,  went  to  the  child  who  had  the  greatest 
number  of  teachers'  votes.  When  two  children  in  a 
Form  tied  for  the  prize,  their  claims  were  settled  by  the 
votes  of  the  other  children  in  that  Form — votes  that 
were  always  cast  with  the  impartiality  of  the  strong 
childish  sense  of  justice. 

The  system  worked  well  in  every  way  :  it  was  Ford's 
'  technique  of  praise  '  in  concrete  and  official  form  ; 
there  was  a  general  feeling  that  the  prizes  had  gone 
to  the  children  who  really  deserved  them  best,  and  i:he 
staff  felt  that  their  judgment  had  found  voice.  At  the 
same  time  the  system  was  not  in  its  essence  competitive 
—and  to  that  extent  did  not  satisfy  the  other  under- 
lying demand  of  the  staff,  that  Ford's  school  should  give 
more  of  a  preparation  for  the  worldly  scramble.  (Dn 
this  point  Ford  was  obdurate.  He  regarded  competi- 
tion as  an  evolutionary  stage  more  than  ready  to  be 
superseded  in  civilised  life  by  co-operation,  and  ttjld 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  207 

that  the  old  competitive  impulse  in  man,  like  the 
coEibative  impulse,  was  strong  enough — and  trouble- 
some enough — without  being  fostered  by  education. 

It  is  difficult  to  write  about  the  later  development  of 
Foi  d's  school,  the  development  through  which  we  hoped 
it  \\  ould  gradually  blossom  out  into  an  educational  insti- 
tution of  effective  size  and  influence,  and  even,  perhaps, 
set  J  joingsome  small  wave  of  general  reform  in  education. 
To  lescribe  it,  now,  is  to  describe  its  failure  to  achieve 
theee  ideals,  in  the  rather  desperate  hope  that  this 
failure  may  lead  others  to  follow  a  similar  educational 
ideal  with  success.  Ford's  ideal  is  worth  following ; 
of  tJiat  no  one  who  worked  with  him  or  studied  under 
him  has  the  slightest  doubt.  If  I  make  an  attempt 
to  trace  the  causes  of  its  failure,  it  is  not  with  any 
idea  of  demonstrating  the  hopelessness  of  a  fine  educa- 
tionjJ  ideal  under  present  conditions,  but  rather  of 
sho\\ing  how  far  the  ideal  could  be,  and  was,  carried, 
;ind  why  the  difficulties  arose  that  prevented  it  from 
bein^-  carried  further.  I  have  used,  and  repeated,  the 
word  '  failure  ' ;  but  I  must  be  understood  to  mean 
the  failure,  not  of  the  ideal,  but  of  its  rise  to  a 
furth  IT  pitch  of  development  than  Ford  achieved  in  the 
first  decade  of  the  twentieth  century.  The  failure 
passe  i ;  the  ideal,  surely,  is  worthy  to  remain.  And  the 
'  failure '  was  only  the  fact  that  Ford's  educational 
impetus  was  brought  to  a  standstill  at  one  particular 
milesl  one,  beyond  which,  perhaps,  few  of  his  time  could 
have  iollowed  him. 


2o8  W.  E.  FORD 

It  would  be  easier  to  dwell  upon  his  success — upon 
the  fact  that  a  few  hundred  children  passed  through  liis 
hands  who  never  wholly  forgot  his  influence,  and  who 
in  their  turn  are  spreading  by  now  some  reflection, 
at  least,  of  the  light  that  suffused  his  teaching.  But 
it  is  better,  I  think,  to  ask  why  his  teaching,  com- 
paratively, failed ;  to  try  to  ascertain  how  it  was  that 
so  fine  an  educational  method  could  not  establish  itself 
beyond  the  point  at  which  convention  called  a  halt. 

Convention  crystallises. itself,  to  my  own  view,  in  the 
person  of  the  imcle  of  one  of  our  children,  who  came 
with  the  child's  mother  to  look  over  the  school.  He 
was  large,  bluff,  friendly,  and  inaccessible  even  to  the 
most  slangy  expression  of  an  educational  notion. 
Ford  told  him  that  we  tried  to  teach  the  children  to 
pull  together — a  sufficiently  sporting  simplification  of 
our  educational  idea;  the  imcle  replied,  taking  on  a 
redder  tinge  with  the  effort  of  abstract  thought,  that 
kids  had  to  learn  how  to  fight  for  their  own  hand  if 
they  were  going  to  make  their  way  in  the  world.  He 
was  afraid  that  his  small  nephew  would  *  get  soft,'  he 
said,  *  with  all  these  girls  around  '  (his  nephew  had  at 
any  rate  learned  how  to  meet  a  girl's  hard  common 
sense)  ;  he  was  glad  that  the  boy  should  be  learning 
to  think,  but  he  considered  (with  Mrs.  A.  and  in  almost 
the  same  words)  that  *  there  is  too  much  thinking 
nowadays.'  As  a  study  in  current  humanity  he  we  s  a 
joy  to  Ford — a  joy  often  quoted,  later  on.  As  Ihe 
influential  uncle  of  one  of  our  children,  he  stood  for 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  209 

Ford  as  the  shape  and  symbol  of  our  most  insuper- 
abli  obstacle.  As  he  turned  to  go  away  with  the 
bo}  's  mother  we  heard  him  say — before  he  could  have 
thoaght,  if  he  had  thought,  to  be  out  of  earshot — '  My 
dear  girl,  when  are  you  going  to  send  that  child  to  a 
proper  school  ? ' 

Eo}^  who  went  from  Ford's  to  a  '  proper  school ' 
alw  lys  did  weU.  They  were  seldom  placed  high  at  the 
first  transplanting — I  can  imagine  a  certain  bewilder- 
ment at  the  difference  of  standard,  a  bewilderment  not 
unsliared  by  those  who  applied  to  them  a  rule-of-thumb 
test  of  knowledge ;  but  they  had  learned  to  think,  and 
quickly  mastered  the  main  lines  of  a  more  automatic 
method  of  instruction.  It  was  a  common  thing  for  a 
boy  from  Ford's  to  be  promoted  twice  in  his  first  term 
else \ /here,  and  promoted  again  every  term  until  he 
had  found  his  level.  Ford  might  have  been  content, 
as,  some  years  later,  he  said  himself,  simply  to  train  up 
your  g  children  so  that  they  might  climb  the  conventional 
ladd*  r  of  learning  the  more  nimbly.  All  educational 
reform  has  its  best  chance  with  the  youngest  children, 
and  ihe  most  sensible  and  natural  form  of  education 
in  England  is  to  be  found  in  the  kindergartens  ;  Ford 
migh ;  have  been  satisfied  by  being  allowed  to  carry  a 
rational  method  to  a  further  stage.  But  his  training 
of  yoinger  children,  much  as  he  loved  the  work,  was 
^nly  :he  foundation  for  a  very  much  wider  and  fuller 
chen  e.  It  was  for  the  realisation  of  this  scheme  that 
he  str  iggled  during  the  last  two  years  of  the  school's  life, 

o 


210  W.  E.  FORD 

His  hope  was  to  build  up  and  extend  the  school  unl  il 
it  carried  children  through  to  University  age  or  to  the 
age  when  they  should  go  out  into  the  world.  It  conld 
not  satisfy  him  to  begin  and  end  by  preparing  children 
to  make  the  best  of  conventional  education  and  its 
disjointed  compromises.  His  work  as  an  educator 
reached  out  to  a  single,  definite  goal — that  the  school 
should  send  into  the  world  of  thought  and  action 
3'oung  men  and  women  who  had  learned  the  unity  of  all 
knowledge  with  itself  and  with  Hfe.  It  may  well  be 
imagined  that  if  his  children  were  sent  away  to  learn 
the  parcelling-up  and  pigeon-holing  of  knowledge  that 
for  many  people  constitutes  education,  it  was  little 
comfort  to  Ford  that  he  had  trained  them  so  that  they 
could  do  it  intelligently.  He  could  not  take  a  pride 
in  their  lending  their  intelligence  to  a  process  which 
he  regarded  cLS  fundamentally  stupid — the  process  of 
putting  up  partitions  in  the  mind  between  different 
'  subjects,'  dividing  and  subdividing,  seldom  or  never 
imiting. 

This  was  not  merely  a  matter  of  scholastic  theory  to 
him.  He  beUeved  the  whole  outlook  of  civiUsed  people 
to  be  quaUfied  by  their  prevailing  inabihty  to  h<jld 
more  than  one  idea  in  their  heads  at  a  time — and  their 
inability,  as  he  once  said,  *  to  put  their  heads  toget  ler 
over  any  question  without  knocking  them  togeth  r/ 
Discussion,  he  said,  is  the  machinery  of  agreement, 
which  is  preliminary  to  the  co-operation  that  dis  in- 
guishes  civilised  from  barbaric  life ;  and  we  do  not  -Us- 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  211 

cush,  we  dispute.  Each  of  us  follows  up  his  own  narrow 
trai  1  of  thought,  finnly  states  his  own  narrow  conclusion, 
and  has  done  with  it ;  you  rarely  find  two  parties  to  a 
discussion  attending  to  each  other's  argument — the 
first,  elementary  necessity  if  they  are  to  agree.  As 
Fortl  traced  all  the  failures  of  civilisation  in  some 
measure  to  failure  of  agreement,  so  he  traced  failure 
of  agreement  to  the  division  and  separation  of  ideas 
that  is  fostered  by  our  prevailing  modes  of  teaching. 
Division  there  had  to  be — dissection,  careful  arrange- 
men:  and  classification  ;  but  always  with  a  view  to 
subs  iquent  reconstruction  and  reimion,  the  fuller  and 
more  complete  for  the  division  that  had  gone  before. 
Our  usual  system  of  education,  he  said,  divides  ;  and 
then  forgets  to  reunite. 

It  was  thought  by  some  that  Ford's  eventual 
aban  ionment  of  his  school  was  due  to  infirmity  of 
purp(  )se,  or  to  a  kind  of  petulance  ;  in  reality,  he  gave 
it  up  rather  than  make  it  auxiliary  to  the  conventional 
systejn.  It  was  not  that  he  despaired  of  prevailing 
methi  )ds  ;  he  believed  that  they  could  and  would  be 
obhgtd  to  undergo  a  process  of  gradual,  organic 
reforri ;  but  he  believed  that  this  reform  could  only 
be  brought  about  from  within — ^not,  at  any  rate,  by 
hildr  m,  barely  grounded  in  a  different  way  of  thought, 
ihese  would  only  show  themselves  somewhat  more 
intelligent  pigeon-holers  than  the  rest.  Ford's  desire 
was  tc  show  the  completed  result  of  a  properly  unified 
system  ;   and  it  was  because  this  essential  aim  of  his 


212  W.  E.  FORD 

proved  impossible  of  achievement  that  he  gave  up  the 
attempt. 

A  single  instance  will  perhaps  show  best  what  it  was 
that  he  declined  to  continue  doing.  A  boy  of  fourteea, 
one  of  our  most  sensible  all-round  thinkers  though  in 
no  way  particularly  brilliant,  and  the  son  of  parents 
who  had  always  shown  a  keen  and  an  understanding 
interest  in  the  school,  was  one  upon  whom  we  had 
securely  reckoned  to  go  on  with  us.  It  was  rather 
suddenly  decided  (perhaps  an  uncle,  in  this  case,  had 
a  say  in  the  matter — I  do  not  know)  that  the  boy  should 
go  to  one  of  the  greater  public  schools.  Such  a  defec- 
tion of  the  faithful  was  always  a  grief  to  Ford.  lie 
saw  that  it  was  not  wholly  the  parents'  fault.  The 
keeping  of  effective  numbers  in  the  upper  part  of  tlie 
school — now  just  passing  the  age  of  fourteen,  the 
conventional  time  of  transition  to  public-school  life — 
was  an  uncertain  business  ;  and  parents  who  were  most 
keen  that  the  building  up  of  the  school  should  continue 
were  also  afraid  that  only  a  straggling  few  would 
remain  to  constitute  the  upper  forms  for  which  ^ve 
hoped.  But,  as  Ford  always  pointed  out  to  them,  they 
did  not  greatly  help  to  remove  this  fear  by  taking  thoir 
own  children  away. 

Ford  did  not  plan  to  teach  Greek  until  the  age  of 
sixteen,  when  it  could  be  learned  with  quickness  and 
certainty  by  children  trained  in  the  general  study  of 
the  science  of  language  ;  this  boy  was  required  to  piss 
an  entrance  examination  that  included  elementary 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  213 

Gre(  k,  within  six  weeks'  time.  Ford  gave  him  half  an 
hour's  coaching  every  afternoon,  without  homework,  to 
teach  him  Greek  and  the  particular  formalisms  required 
for  ?xaminat ion-passing  in  general.  With  these  six 
weeks  of  quiet,  unhurried  preparation  the  boy  passed 
the  examination  easily.  He  had  been  so  trained  that, 
as  Greek  was  only  a  special  case  of  a  known  system  of 
lang-iage,  so  the  unfamiliar  formalisms  of  the  examina- 
tion system  were  only  a  special  and  a  somewhat  narrow 
way  of  expressing  certain  parts  of  a  realised  system 
of  krowledge.  The  boy  took  a  good  place  in  the  public 
schod  and  rose  rapidly.  He  came  to  see  us  several 
time^  later  on.  His  work  at  school,  parcelled  out  into 
a  series  of  watertight  compartments,  was  growing 
steadily  narrower  in  its  scope  ;  he  was  learning  no 
natural  science,  scarcely  anything  about  his  own 
language,  nothing  to  any  purpose  except  different,  dis- 
connected branches  of  classics  and  mathematics.  He 
remained  keen  and  full  of  interest  in  the  world  and  its 
conceiTis,  but  with  an  imguided  keenness  and  an 
ignon  nt  interest.  Plainly  his  interests  and  his  know- 
ledge were  growing  more  and  more  detached  from  one 
another.  His  work  was  giving  him  no  terms  in  which 
to  think  and  speak  about  the  real  concerns  of  life.  It 
was  jvst  work,  to  be  done  and  put  aside.  The  boy's 
mind  md  his  nature,  which  we  had  watched  growing 
into  an  effective  whole  while  he  was  with  us,  were 
growirg  apart — ^the  one  sterile,  the  other  starved  of 
thought. 


214  W.  E.  FORD 

It  was  against  results  of  this  kind  that  Ford's  soul 
revolted  ;  and  they  began  to  appear  with  increasing 
regularity  during  the  school's  last  two  years,  wh<m 
one  child  after  another  drifted  away  at  about  the  age 
of  fourteen,  to  return  presently  as  an  '  old '  boy  or  girl, 
shyly  affectionate,  full  of  inarticulate  phrases  of 
gratitude  for  old  times,  and  manifestly  resigned  to  new 
times  that  gave  them  little  satisfaction  of  the  spirit. 
They  came  back,  as  Ford  once  said,  with  their  wings 
tidily  and  neatly  clipped — no  cheerful  spectacle  for  the 
man  who  had  trained  them  in  the  beginnings  of  the 
art  of  mental  flight. 

A  Form  of  children  over  fourteen — Form  V. — 
struggled  into  being  with  the  opening  of  what  was  to 
prove  the  last  year  of  the  school's  life.  There  was  some 
talk  of  making  it  a  Form  of  boys  alone  ;  but  Mr. 
Wishart,  who  first  threw  out  the  idea,  never  ent(3r- 
tained  it  seriously.  None  of  us  had  the  least  doubt  by 
now  upon  the  merits  of  the  co-educational  case  ;  and 
from  the  point  of  view  of  success,  there  had  been  very 
little  evidence  that  prejudice  on  this  subject  stood  in 
the  school's  way.  Parents  who  withdrew  their  child  en 
often  lamented  that  a  '  proper  school '  would  have  to 
be  a  separate  boys'  or  girls'  school ;  and  it  seemed  likt'ly 
that  in  excluding  girls  from  the  new  upper  forms  we 
might  lose  not  only  the  girls,  but  one  or  two  boys  as 
well — besides  surrendering  a  principle  in  which  we 
had  learned  by  experience  to  believe.  Ford,  indeed, 
was  sure  that  to  educate  small  boys  and  girls  togelJier 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  215 

wn  s  chiefly  important  as  leading  up  to  natural  relations 
during  adolescence  ;  it  was  then  that  the  principal 
ad/antage  of  co-education — '  the  civilising  of  the 
se>es  ' — would  really  begin.  It  was  not  the  least  of 
the  tragedy  which  the  school's  ending  implied  for  him 
the  t  this  development  of  a  sane  intellectual  under- 
standing between  adolescent  boys  and  girls  was  denied 
the  thought  and  care  which  he  was  so  ready  and  eager 
to  devote  to  it. 

The  struggle  for  existence  which  was  the  ordeal  of 
Form  V.  during  that  concluding  year  can  best  be  pre- 
sented in  three  acts — the  three  terms  of  the  school's 
last  twelvemonth.  The  starting  of  the  Form  was  in 
an\  case  a  precarious  undertaking.  There  were  five 
children,  three  boys  and  two  girls,  who  had  surpassed 
the  standard  of  Form  IV a,  and  whose  parents  had 
faitli  enough  to  let  them  adventure  upon  the  further 
cou  -se.  Ford  felt  that  it  was  now  or  never — to  reject 
this  somewhat  meagre  opportunity  of  extension  would 
be  to  put  a  closure  upon  later  opportunities — and  Mr. 
Wis'iart  agreed  that  the  new  Form  had  better  be 
star  ed.  When  another  boy,  withdrawn  by  provisional 
notice  given  before  the  preceding  summer  term,  was 
une>  pectedly  returned  to  the  fold  at  the  end  of  the 
summer  holidays,  we  rejoiced  as  at  a  favourable  omen. 
Forri  V.  would  now  come  into  being  full  six  strong. 
And  when  another  girl,  a  new-comer  of  fifteen,  elder 
siste  •  of  a  boy  already  in  the  school,  was  entered  on  the 
very  day  that  term  began,  we  felt  that  at  this  rate 


2i6  W.  E.  FORD 

ultimate  success  was  assured.  Seven  children  who  had 
crossed  the  fourteen-year-old  Rubicon  were  a  nucleus 
worthy  of  respect  for  the  foundation  of  an  upper 
school.  I  think  that  at  this  time  we  all  upheld  one 
another  in  a  desperate  optimism  ;  Mrs.  Ford,  I  remem- 
ber, even  brought  in  the  argument  that  seven  was  a 
lucky  number. 

The  autumn  term  seemed  to  begin  under  tha 
happiest  auspices — and  in  three  weeks  there  was 
trouble  brewing  among  the  staff.  Perhaps  there  was 
an  underconsciousness  that  our  hopes  ran  beyond  our 
prospects  ;  but  the  instinct  even  of  rats  leads  them  to 
do  nothing  worse  than  desert  a  ship  that  is  doomed  to 
sink.  They  do  not  accelerate  the  sinking  by  gnawing  at 
her  sides.  Our  rats  talked  with  one  another,  and  witli 
some  of  the  parents,  and  their  talk  was  of  the  kind 
that  disintegrates  loyalty.  I  am  convinced,  I  must 
say  in  justice,  that  they  had  no  conscious  motive  in 
doing  so  ;  they  helped  in  their  degree  to  pull  Ford's 
school  down  because  they  felt  unsure  of  its  success, 
and  so  felt  in  honour  bound  to  prophesy,  and  to 
exonerate  themselves  from,  its  failure.  But  incident- 
ally they  lost  the  school  two  of  its  seven  elder  pupils  ; 
and  this  was  the  conclusion  of  the  first  act. 

The  spring  term  that  followed  found  us  with  fi^  3 
elder  children,  four  of  them  under  provisional  notice  1o 
leave  if  more  should  not  be  forthcoming.  The  sprir  ^^ 
term  is  always  the  least  cheerful  of  terms  ;  colds  rag  , 
even  if  more  formidable  epidemics  are  absent,  and  in 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  217 

any  case  human  enthusiasm  is  liable  to  fall  to  its  lowest 
ebb  somewhere  about  the  end  of  February — *  the 
year's  two-o*clock-in-the-moming/  as  Ford  once  put 
it.  The  parents  of  our  Form  V.  talked  with  one  another, 
and  with  the  more  despondent  members  of  the  staff ; 
and  thereafter  Ford  and  Mrs.  Ford  talked  with  them  in 
vail.  They  were  convinced — perhaps  they  were  right 
— that  Form  V.  would  never  grow  into  a  completed 
upjier  school.  Provisional  notices  were  confirmed  ; 
the  existence  of  Form  V.  was  to  end  with  the  ending  of 
the  spring  term. 

Ford  had  lost.  We  talked  it  over  in  full  conclave — 
the  staff  a  little  remorseful,  and  inclined,  too  late,  to 
try  to  see  the  bright  side  of  things — towards  the  end 
of  the  term.  There  was  no  hope  at  all  of  building  up 
a  nt  w  upper  school ;  the  rot  had  already  spread  to  the 
pap^nts  of  Forms  lYa  and  even  IVb,  who  were  giving 
panic-stricken  notice  of  removal  at  the  end  of  the  next 
terri.  The  staff,  I  believe,  really  hoped  that  at  last 
this  ambitious  foolishness  of  trying  to  extend  the 
schcol  beyond  the  preparatory  level  might  be  at  an 
end.  The  attitude  of  Ford  and  his  wife,  fully  backed 
up  by  Mr.  Wishart,  came  as  a  surprise  to  them.  The 
school  was  not  to  continue  as  a  preparatory.  It  was 
to  end  with  the  following  summer  term  ;  and  notice 
of  it  i  winding-up  was  to  be  sent  to  all  the  parents  forth- 
with .  This  was  the  mildly  and  by  no  means  pleasantly 
dramatic  conclusion  of  the  second  act.  I  did  not 
env}  Ford  his  Easter  holidays — I  did  not  enjoy  my 


2i8  W.  E.  FORD 

own.  He  and  his  wife  went  with  Mr.  Wishart  to  North 
Cornwall,  and  the  three  talked,  I  beHeve,  at  length 
about  the  possibiUty  of  another  educational  scheme, 
always  to  come  back  to  the  fact  of  present  failure. 
They  could  form  no  judgment,  in  the  end,  but  that  the 
present  failure  was  absolute,  and  imder  present  con- 
ditions irreparable.  Ford  began  at  this  time,  I  knov:, 
to  look  beyond  the  process  of  education  itself  for  the 
causes  of  the  failure,  and  to  ask  himself  what  might 
be  the  fimdamental  trouble  of  a  civilisation  so  slovv 
to  develop  its  educational  function.  But  his  dealing 
with  this  wider  problem  must  be  the  subject  of  another 
chapter. 

The  third  act,  the  summer  term,  our  last  term, 
opened  in  false  stmshine,  as  false  as  the  May  cloudless - 
ness  that  led  on  to  the  downpours  of  June  and  ]vly. 
It  was  not  that  the  ill  weather  of  our  final  weeks 
symbolised  a  prevailing  gloominess  among  ourselves  ; 
the  school  went  down  with  all  its  flags  flying,  and  in  a 
way  there  was  more  of  essential  harmony  in  its  woric 
at  the  end  than  there  had  even  been  before.  Ford 
seemed  resolved  to  throw  the  very  best  of  himself  into 
a  last  effort  on  behalf  of  the  school's  remnant,  and  wii 
were  all  infected  with  his  energy  and  enthusiasm. 
Misgivings  among  the  staff  were  at  an  end,  except  th() 
misgiving  that  it  might  be  a  heroic  mistake  to  refuse  t) 
go  on  quietly  with  the  material  for  good  work  that  sti  I 
remained.  But  there  was  a  sense  of  finality  over  ji: 
all.     It  was  the  end  ;  and  if  we  all  strove  so  eagerly  t  :> 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  219 

make  the  most  of  it,  the  chief  reason  was  because  we 
felt  it  to  be  the  end.  If  it  had  been  a  new,  constricted 
beginning — Ford's  school  with  its  wings  chpped — I 
doubt  if  the  same  feehng  would  have  inspired  us.  I 
feel  no  doubt  at  aU  that  it  was  best  for  the  school  to 
en  i  as  it  did,  in  cheerful,  far  from  fatalistic  recognition 
of  the  inevitable.  It  was  not  the  kind  of  school  to 
se(  k  for  itself  a  level  that  would  compromise  with  con- 
vention. It  had  to  stand  or  fall  in  the  light  of  Ford's 
ins  piration  as  an  educator  ;  ultimately,  it  had  to  fall, 
and  Ford  had  to  dig  deeper  into  reality  to  find  out  why 
it  fell.  If  it  had  continued,  maintaining  itself  upon 
a  specious  compromise,  it  would  have  grown  stagnant, 
and  Ford  would  never  have  begun  to  analyse  that 
certral  trouble  of  civilisation  which  still  makes  it  im- 
possible for  such  teaching  as  his  to  achieve  success. 

An  idea  was  mooted  by  some  of  the  parents  for 
kec  ping  the  lower  forms  in  being,  and  two  of  the  staff 
ap])roached  Ford  and  Mr.  Wishart  with  a  proposal  for 
tal<ing  over  the  younger  children.  Ford  was  not  un- 
wil  ing  that  this  should  be  done,  and  even  offered  to 
draw  up  a  simplified  scheme  for  a  young  children's 
school  that  should  aim,  not  at  extending  its  scope, 
but  at  providing  as  rational  a  preparation  as  possible 
for  conventional  instruction.  The  plan  was  not 
followed  up,  for  a  variety  of  reasons.  Ostensibly,  a 
financial  difficulty  was  the  chief  obstacle.  The  school 
house  and  its  arrangements  were  on  a  scale  that  would 
overburden  the  resources  of  a  small  school.    But  a 


220  W.  E.  FORD 

way  out  of  this  and  the  other  difficulties  that  arose 
could  have  been  found  if  the  will  had  been  present. 
When  it  came  to  the  point,  even  those  who  had  felt 
the  strongest  misgivings  about  Ford's  wider  educational 
ideal,  found  themselves  unable  to  face  the  prospect 
of  taking  over  children  whom  Ford  had  taught,  and 
giving  them,  inevitably,  less  than  Ford  had  given. 
Eventually,  only  the  kindergarten  was  kept  on,  by  the 
faithful  Mme.  Andr^e ;  Mr.  Wishart  made  her  a 
present  of  the  connection,  and  she  took  rooms  in  the 
neighbourhood  and  carried  on  the  methods  of  Froebel, 
with  some  reminiscence  of  Ford,  until  family  affairs 
recalled  her  to  Switzerland  some  years  later. 

One  father  took  the  trouble  to  write  to  Ford  a  letter 
that  was  a  reasoned  criticism  of  the  decision  to  give 
up  the  school.  While  expressing  regret  that  Ford's 
'  intelligent  system  should  not  have  met  with  more 
quantitative  appreciation,'  he  put  forward  the  opinion 
that  it  was  Ford's  business  as  an  educator  to  adjust 
his  system  to  suit  the  world  as  it  is.  *  Your  way  is 
better,  I  fully  recognise,'  he  wrote.  *  But  it  has  not 
worked  ;  and  if  our  stupidity  is  to  blame  for  that  fact 
(as  I  certainly  think  it  is),  then  surely  you  should  mak<: 
things  easier  for  us,  not  throw  us  over  altogether.' 
I  wish  I  had  a  copy  of  the  reply  that  Ford  showed  to 
me  before  he  sent  it  off.  It  expressed  his  real  reason  ^ 
for  dropping  the  school  better  in  a  few  sentences  thaii 
I  could  analyse  them  in  many  pages.  The  bald  gist 
of  it  was  that  Ford  could  only  see  two  ways  of  educal  - 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  221 

in^ — the  right  way  and  the  wrong  way  ;  he  had 
worked  out  as  popularly  as  possible  the  way  that  he 
considered  right,  and  he  was  not  going  to  do  the  only 
thing  that  remained  to  do  :  to  compromise  with  the 
Wc.y  that  he  considered  wrong.  In  this,  he  explained, 
he  was  not  setting  up  an  absolute  of  rightness  in 
education  ;  he  was  simply  following  his  own  nose. 
W  len  he  found  that  the  way  which  he  considered  right 
wa  s  blocked,  he  could  only  set  himself  to  find  out  what 
th(  obstruction  was  and  how  it  might  eventually  be 
rer.ioved.  That,  he  concluded,  was  an  investigation 
which  he  meant  to  begin  forthwith. 

The  real  question  that  he  had  had  to  decide  was 
whither  the  obstacle  to  the  practical  success  of  his 
system — a  system,  be  it  remembered,  that  was  not  his 
alone,  but  was  based  upon  educational  principles  long 
ago  accepted  as  gospel  in  theory  and  left  on  the  shelf 
in  j>ractice — was  one  that  could  be  removed  by  educa- 
tion itself,  or  one  for  which  the  cause  would  have  to 
be  sought  in  some  flaw  of  civilisation  outside  the 
edu:ational  field.  The  fact  that  the  main  principles 
whi  :h  he  followed  had  been  in  existence  for  centuries 
had  the  casting  vote  in  his  decision.  Three  hundred 
yeais  had  passed  since  the  Moravian  educator, 
Conenius,  laid  down  a  system  of  which  Ford's  was 
the  direct  descendant ;  the  principles  of  Comenius 
were  everywhere  accepted  in  theory  without  pro- 
ducing any  but  the  most  superficial  influence  upon 
actuil  school  work.    Three  hundred  years,  eight  or 


222  W.  E.  FORD 

ten  generations,  Ford  considered  enough  for  th(3 
conversion  of  sound  principle  into  effectual  practice, 
if  the  evolution  of  teaching  alone  were  concerned. 
The  bUndest  conservatism  yields  in  time  to  a  process 
of  gradual,  organic  development.  The  obstruction 
must  he  outside  the  educational  circle.  '  There  is  a 
dead  hand  upon  education,'  Ford  wrote  in  a  letter  to 
me,  *  and  I  have  got  to  find  out  what  it  is.' 

He  did  not  expect  to  find  out  any  immediate,  easy 
formula  for  the  explanation  of  the  *  dead  hand.'  As 
he  thought  more  about  the  question  he  saw  more  and 
more  clearly  how  large  was  the  undertaking  to  whicli 
he  had  committed  himself.  It  was  nothing  less  than  a 
study  of  civilised  society  as  a  whole,  an  attempt  to 
trace  and  map  out  all  the  ramifying  influences  of  social 
life.  Somewhere  among  that  network  of  influences 
there  was  a  tangle,  a  falsity,  in  which  the  advance 
of  education  was  caught  up  and  impeded  :  and  to 
unravel  the  tangle  it  would  be  necessary  to  know 
where  every  thread  ought  to  lead.  It  was  thus  that 
Ford  became  absorbed  in  the  gigantic  subject  of  the 
organisation  of  social  life  ;  and  from  this,  again,  th:it 
he  developed,  and  left,  alas,  unfinished,  a  system  <:)f 
social  philosophy  that  will  be  outlined  later  on.^ 

He  threw  himself  with  a  certain  sternness  of  ze;d 
into  the  new  work.     It  was  of  his  own  free  will  th  .t 


*  This  reference  is  to  the  larger  work  we  have  under  conside  a- 
tion,  and  not  to  the  few  notes  on  Ford's  philosophy  which  make  up 
chapter  xi. 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  223 

he  abandoned  school  work,  but  none  the  less  for  that — 
per]  laps  the  more — he  missed  his  school  terribly,  and 
needed  the  consolatory  distraction  of  hard  thinking. 
He  found  another  solace  in  watching  with  Mrs.  Ford 
the  dawning  intelligence  of  the  two  little  girls  who 
had  been  bom  to  them.  There  remained  a  note  of 
restained  sadness  in  Ford's  expression  ever  after  the 
givi  ig  up  of  the  school,  and  I  think  no  one  but  his 
wife  knew  quite  how  hard  he  had  been  hit ;  but  to  see 
him  with  his  children  was  to  see  the  old  Ford  as  though 
no  le verse  had  happened  to  him  in  all  his  life.  He 
seened  to  participate  in  the  freshness  of  their  experi- 
ence, to  feel  in  himself  the  infantile,  elemental  wonder 
with  which  his  babies  looked  out  upon  the  visible 
univ  ivse. 


CHAPTER  X 

Ford's  great  undertaking  began,  as  his  venture  into 
school-keeping  had  begun,  with  a  study  of  authorities  ; 
he  became  again  a  frequenter  of  the  British  Museum 
reading-room,  and  began  to  fill  the  first  of  a  series  of 
manuscript  books  (I  have  seventeen  of  these  before 
me)  with  notes  upon  the  natural  history  of  civilisation. 
One  point  struck  him  almost  from  the  first.  I  remember 
his  speaking  of  it  to  me,  certainly  within  a  month  of 
beginning  his  investigation  ;  and  it  creeps  into  his 
first  note-book  at  the  ninth  page,  becoming  more  and 
more  pronounced  thereafter.  The  authorities  were 
all  profoundly  ignorant  of  something  that  Ford  dimly 
knew.  Or  rather,  they  were  congenitally  blind  to 
certain  lights  or  colourings  in  the  history  of  civilisation 
that  struck  vividly  upon  his  eye,  though  without 
immediate  significance. 

Ford  possessed  some  undefinable  sixth  sense  that 
often  brought  him  to  conclusions  more  true  and  com- 
plete than  seemed  to  be  available  from  the  evidence 
before  him.  He  appeared  at  times,  in  his  moods  of 
concentration,  literally  to  originate  knowledge  ;  rea  :h- 
ing  out  beyond  his  power  of  clear  and  acute  reason:  ig 
there  was  an  intuitive  faculty  that  seemed  to  grasp   he 

221 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  225 

evolution  of  fact  without  intermediary  thought  about 
causes  and  probabiUties.  It  was  as  though  he  put 
hiriself  in  touch  with  the  essential  process  of  becoming. 
I  am  obliged  to  tantaUse  the  reader  as  much  as  I  am 
taEtahsed  myself  over  that  elusive  realisation  which 
was  at  the  root  of  Ford's  eventual  views  upon  the 
progress  of  man.  He  loathed  mystifications,  and  was 
alw  ays  lucid  and  illuminating  upon  any  point  that  he 
hac  reasoned  out ;  but  these  intuitive  conclusions  of 
his  refused  to  fit  into  any  formula.  I  could  say  that 
his  early  intuition  of  a  flaw  in  our  whole  conception 
of  civilisation  was  this  or  that,  but  only  to  find  that  it 
was  really  the  other — an  *  other '  which  escapes 
definition. 

I  have  only  one  distinct  clue  :  Ford's  extraordinary 
knovvledge  of  working-class  life  and  thought  and  feel- 
ing had  something  to  do  with  it.  The  *  masses,'  upon 
whose  labour  civihsation  rests,  have  an  ethic  and  a 
philc  sophy  of  their  own,  comprehended  but  unexpressed 
by  themselves,  uncomprehended  and  mis-stated  by 
their  would-be  interpreters.  Ford  in  some  way  knew 
it  from  the  inside  ;  and  he  saw  a  fundamental  unreality 
in  a  state  of  society  in  which  the  thoughts  of  the  vast 
majoiity  are  a  closed  book,  or  rather  a  book  wide  open 
but  unreadable,  to  the  comparatively  few  who  endeavour 
to  st€er  the  entire  bulk.  *  It  isn't  they  '  (the  masses) 
*  who  suffer,'  he  once  said  to  me  ;  '  it 's  us.'  Civilisa- 
tion, ne  insisted,  in  so  far  as  it  is  civilisation  and  not 
an  mihappy  illusion,  is  unity,  unanimity;    and  the 

P 


226  W.  E.  FORD 

people  at  the  top,  whose  privilege  of  leisure  and  edu- 
cated thought  should  mean  that  they  represent  the 
mind,  the  self-consciousness  of  the  whole,  are  simply 
imcivilised — '  tamed  and  pampered  savages  playing  at 
manners,'  as  Ford  once  put  it — in  so  far  as  their  con- 
sciousness extends  only  to  themselves  and  to  their 
own  group. 

This  conception  of  the  prevailing  culture  as  an 
essentially  hollow  thing,  a  painted  shell  detached  froin 
the  realities  that  all  men  share,  gives  one  index,  I  think, 
to  the  flaw  which  Ford's  intuition  perceived  in  the 
civilised  life  of  to-day.  But  it  was  an  explanation 
much  wider  and  also  much  more  definite  of  which  he 
was  in  search.  I  read  his  note-books,  and  tlie 
explanation  seems  to  be  there,  complete  and  ready, 
urgent  even,  to  be  uttered  ;  I  look  up  from  his  pages 
and  try  to  find  words  for  the  thought,  and  the  whole 
sense  of  it  has  vanished.  I  wonder,  if  Ford  had  liv(3d 
to  write  his  book  upon  the  principles  of  civilisation, 
whether  he  could  have  reduced  to  clear  language  his 
inner  sense  that  he  had  of  our  central  stumbling-block. 
The  word  '  fellowship '  haunts  my  mind  when  I  try 
to  express  for  myself  the  essential  which,  in  For:rs 
view,  all  civiUsations  have  lacked  ;  but  that  is  a  word 
whose  meaning  depends  entirely  upon  experience  of 
the  reality. 

Ford  had  taken  a  house  in  Golden  Square  ;   pai  i  ly 
to  be  near  the  Museum,  partly  because  he  had  a  curi  :us 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  227 

fondness,  which  Mrs.  Ford  found  no  difficulty  in  sharing, 
for  the  neighbourhood  of  Bloomsbury.  He  said  that 
for  middle-class  people  of  a  serious  turn  of  mind 
Bbomsbury  was  the  only  district  in  London  that 
fit  red.  Everywhere  else  you  found  pretentiousness. 
Ke  nsington  was  socially  pretentious  ;  Chelsea  aesthetic- 
all  /  ;  Bays  water,  St.  John's  Wood,  Battersea,  had 
each  their  distinctive  brand  of  artificiality.  Blooms- 
bu:y  alone,  he  explained  to  me  with  exaggerated 
sol<  mnity,  was  wholly,  perfectly  uncoloured.  Its  by- 
gore  standing  as  a  fashionable  quarter  gone,  it  had 
acquired  no  new  status  to  which  it  would  be  criminal  not 
to  conform ;  it  was  a  trifle  drab  and  musty,  perhaps, 
but  in  your  own  comer  you  could  sweep  away  the  dust 
of  the  eighteenth  century  and  be  free  to  think  your 
own  thoughts  imcensored.  The  environment  of  his 
working  hours,  the  Museum  reading-room,  also  satisfied 
his  sense  of  fitness.  It  was  an  intellectual  centre 
where  there  was  a  real  democracy  of  intellect.  The 
reader  in  the  next  place  to  yours  might  be  a  Rabbi 
tran.'  lating  an  old  Hebrew  manuscript,  or  a  veterinary 
stud'tnt  investigating  the  physiology  of  the  horse  ; 
there  was  no  convention  of  study,  and  yet  you  were  in 
an  aimosphere  of  study  that  was  quietly  stimulating. 
Ford  threw  out  the  idea  that  perhaps  if  every  one  were 
left  r.iore  free  to  study  in  his  own  way,  an  education 
might  be  evolved  that  would  undermine  the  artifici- 
alities of  civilisation.  It  is  hardly  fair  to  quote  a 
loose,  half -humorous  statement  of  this  kind,  but  it 


228  W.  E.  FORD 

indicates  the  general  direction  in  which  Ford's  mind 
was  working  at  this  time.  He  wanted  to  see  the  art 
of  thinking  freed  from  the  vague,  atmospheric,  but 
powerful  influences  that  dictate  to  us,  before  we  begin, 
what  we  ought  to  think. 

The  mental  atmosphere  of  Bloomsbury  and  the 
Museum  reading-room  might  be  free  enough,  but  the 
physical  atmosphere  was  another  matter ;  and  after 
six  months  or  so  Mrs.  Ford  began  to  be  anxious  about 
Ford's  health.  Ford  admitted  that  the  British  Museum 
was  not  an  ideal  breathing-place.  '  There  are  three 
kinds  of  air,'  he  said  to  me  once,  *  fresh  air,  stale  air, 
and  ventilation.  Ventilation  is  the  worst  of  the  three .' 
The  filtered,  devitalised  air  of  the  Museum  certainly 
did  not  suit  him  ;  and  Bloomsbury  itself  is  not  exactly 
one  of  the  lungs  of  London.  Mrs.  Ford  declared  that  he 
had  suffered  more  and  lost  more  vitality  than  he 
knew,  or  would  recognise,  over  the  failure  of  tlie 
school ;  and  there  was  no  doubt,  besides,  that  tlie 
magnitude  of  his  new  task  weighed  upon  him ;  at  all 
events  his  physical  well-being  began  to  be  a  matter  of 
concern.  I  do  not  know  how  far  this  factor,  and  a 
growing  distaste  for  'ventilation,'  made  him  decide 
that  there  was  little  more  to  be  gained  by  poring  o\  er 
the  scores  of  volumes  upon  his  list  that  were  still  un- 
read ;  but  I  think  that  his  disquiet  was  mainly  cue 
to  the  unsatisfactoriness  of  the  learned  authorities  to 
whom  he  had  turned  for  guidance  at  the  beginning  of 
his   quest.     He   was   disappointed  that   the  store   of 


» 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  229 

recorded  human  wisdom  told  so  little  ;  and  the  drop 
in  his  physical  vitality  was,  I  think,  as  much  the  reflex 
of  this  disappointment  as  anything  else. 

Ford  decided,  suddenly,  to  leave  his  family  and  to 
go  abroad  for  a  time.  Mrs.  Ford  dwelt  upon  the 
qu  2stion  of  his  health  as  the  determining  reason  ;  Ford 
hiiiself  spoke  only  of  the  claims  of  his  work.  He  has 
bern  severely  criticised  for  spending  three  quarters  of 
his  time,  in  the  last  years  of  his  life,  in  travelling  alone, 
lam  naturally  a  partisan  of  Ford's  upon  any  point  of 
crit  icism  that  can  be  brought  against  him,  but  I  do  not 
think  it  is  for  that  reason  that  I  cannot  see  the  case 
against  him  as  a  deserter  of  the  domesticities.  If  he 
had  been  a  naval  officer,  his  disappearances  would  have 
seei  aed  the  most  natural  thing  in  the  world ;  as  a 
philosopher  engaged  in  original  research  he  had 
apparently  no  such  claim  upon  the  indulgence  of  some 
of  his  friends.  He  was  in  pursuit  of  an  important 
truth  ;  books  had  told  him  all  that  they  could  about 
the  nature  of  civilisation — or  had  shown  him  their 
incaoacity  to  tell  the  thing  that  he  chiefly  cared  to 
know  ;  and  he  went  about  the  world  to  see  and  dis- 
cover for  himself  at  first  hand.  It  was  his  business  in 
life  ;  to  regard  it  as  a  dereliction  of  marital  duty  seems 
to  me  a  foolishness  past  criticism.  But  there  "are 
those  who  have  never  recognised  that  in  the  work 
and  thought  of  Ford's  last  years  lies  the  principal 
evidence  of  the  greatness  of  his  personality. 

Thj  first  purpose  of  his  travelling  was  to  discover 


230  W.  E.  FORD 

what  are  the  elements  of  permanence  and  stability  in 
civilisation.  He  always  remembered  Palma  as  a 
supreme  instance  of  a  healthy  and  contented  human 
society ;  but  Palma  was  a  peaceful  backwater  in  the 
development  of  civilisation,  where  the  real  problems, 
of  modem  life  were  not  worked  out  but  left  out.  Hv 
talked  to  me  at  some  length,  one  evening  about  a  week 
before  he  set  out  upon  his  first  journey.  Palma,  h(; 
said,  was  the  foundation,  but  no  more  than  the  founda- 
tion, of  that  which  he  conceived  as  an  ideal  society. 
It  was  the  starting-point ;  a  simple  and  a  right  form  of 
social  organisation  that  was  capable  of  branching  out 
into  a  state  of  being  at  once  more  highly  developed 
and  more  conscious  of  itself.  Every  high  civilisation 
had  been  a  Palma  at  one  time.  Some  such  Arcadian 
phase  was  the  necessary  beginning.  But  then  every 
civilisation,  in  its  development,  seemed  obhged  to  lose 
the  distinctive,  fundamental  qualities  of  the  Palma 
people.  Interests,  ways  of  thought  and  language, 
became  detached  from  one  another ;  specialiseti 
development  branched  into  endless  divisions  and  sub- 
divisions, but  the  unity  of  the  whole  was  lost.  Ford 
was  convinced  that  disunity  in  any  civilisation  is 
deadness  :  that  diversification  is  signal  evidence  <  f 
vitality,  but  that  diversification  which  does  not  lee  d 
to  a  further  and  a  fuller  unity  in  difference  is  a  sign  thit 
vitahty  is  running  into  a  blind  alley.  He  had  searcb  d 
the  historians  in  vain  for  any  clear  recognition  of  tl  is 
principle  ;   and  it  was  essential  to  his  investigation  to 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  231 

make  sure  whether  the  branching-out  of  civihsation 
into  a  necessary  and  inevitable  diversity  of  separate 
po  ths  must  necessarily  and  inevitably  lead  to  disunity, 
or  whether  there  was  any  sign  that  a  higher  and  more 
CO  oiplex  unity  tended  to  supervene — as  in  the  evolution 
of  animal  life,  where  diversity  of  organs  and  functions 
CO  lid  only  develop  hand-in-hand  with  the  growth  of  a 
centralised,  co-ordinating  nervous  system. 

In  the  one  case  Ford  could  only  conclude  that 
ci\  ilisation  as  we  conceive  it  is  a  mistake,  a  mere 
proliferation  without  purpose,  necessarily  doomed  to 
dedine  ;  and  that  it  is  our  business  to  resign  ourselves 
hu  nbly  to  the  simpler  way  of  life — more  or  less  after 
the  Palma  model.  But  if  the  complete  unity  in 
diversity  which  was  his  own  ideal  of  a  sound  civilisa- 
tion was  attainable,  it  was  clear  that  we  were  not 
goi  ig  the  right  way  to  attain  it.  In  this  case,  it  was 
our  business  to  investigate  the  more  stable  civilisations, 
anc  try  to  see  what  was  the  principle  of  permanence 
to  \/hich  they  owed  their  survival.  This  the  historians 
had  failed  to  do,  if  one  can  speak  of  failure  in  a  task 
tha;  has  never  been  attempted.  Ford  intended  to 
tra^'el  through  India  and  China  for  a  beginning — not, 
I  nred  hardly  say,  to  invent  means  of  adapting  the 
marners  and  customs  of  Indians  and  Chinese  to  English 
use,  but  to  see  if  he  could  discover,  by  observation  of 
thei  *  ways  of  life,  the  particular  causes  that  had  given 
to  those  peoples  so  long  an  innings  in  the  history  of 
civilisation.    He  had  gained,  by  his  stay  in  Palma, 


232  W.  E.  FORD 

an  experience  of  unique  value  to  his  outlook  upon 
human  life  ;  he  hoped  to  catch  in  the  same  way  th(i 
essential  atmosphere  of  an  ancient  and  long  enduring,' 
social  organisation. 

The  magnitude  of  the  reaction  which  the  East  pro- 
duced upon  such  a  mind  as  Ford's  can  be  imagined. 
The  note-books,  which  record  his  deepening  impression 
of  an  outlook  fundamentally  different  from  the  Western, 
record  also  a  struggle  in  his  own  mind — a  struggle  to 
escape  being  swept  into  a  wider  field  of  investigation 
than  that  upon  which  he  had  set  out.  He  wanted  to 
realise  the  Eastern  philosophy  of  civilisation ;  hn 
found  it  closely  entangled  with  an  Eastern  philosophy 
of  the  universe.  Take  this  series  of  jottings  from  one 
of  the  note-books  : — 

*  Principle  of  permanence  in  civilisation  is  imity. 
Principle  of  progress  is  continual  diversification. 
Hyp.  :  the  East  has  an  excess  of  the  former  principle, 
the  West  of  the  latter. 

'  Obj. :  Castes.  But  these  are  old  and  fixed — no 
further  diversification  possible — would  be  thought 
impious.  And  they  exist  in  static  interrelation — a::i 
estabhshed  unity  in  difference. 

'  Nirvana  ^ :  Very  significant  that  in  this  ideal  of  ai 
ultimate  state  no  attraction  whatever  is  held  out 
but  absolute  union  with  deity  ;    i.e.  unity  must  en  1 

^  Obviously  the  Nirvana  of  common  acceptance  in  the  East,  not 
the  Nirvana  of  a  few  (chiefly  Western)  philosophers,  in  which 
individuality  is  in  some  sense  conserved. 


1^ 

r 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  233 

by  swallowing  up  diversity,  not  perfecting  and  justify- 
ing it.  Is  this  philosophically  thinkable  ?  The  only 
unity  that  satisfies  the  equation  seems  to  be  a  unity 
in  absolute  annihilation.     If  this  is  sound  : — 

'  Much  of  the  East  has  a  religion  that  poetises  belief  in 
ultimate  cessation  of  being.  {N.B.  Dass  admits  this, 
bur  with  reservations  as  to  the  meaning  of  the  term 
"  bsing."     Don't  think  he  escapes  my  conclusion.) 

'  If  being  is  unity  in  difference  ^ — the  wider  the 
ramification,  given  full  co-ordination  of  parts  and 
functions,  the  higher  the  perfection.  {N.B.  This 
necessarily  makes  perfection  a  relative,  not  an  absolute 
term.)  Then  Nirvana,  abolition  of  difference,  is 
abc  lition  of  being. 

'  Unless  these  people,  as  Dass  seems  to  imply,  can 
sense  some  entirely  different  category  of  being,  quite 
uns  nzable  by  thought.  (Nirvana  is  positive  —  ec- 
static.)  But  if  so,  there  is  absolute  cleavage  between 
this  sense  and  thought;  i.e.  thought  is  absolutely, 
not  relatively,  fallacious.     Experience  denies  this. 

'  [t  appears  that  the  conception  of  Nirvana  results 
from  letting  go  of  thought  at  the  point  where  thought 
demands  an  uncomfortable  degree  of  diversity ; 
falli-ig  back  upon  an  ideal  of  imity  pure  and  simple 
(i.e.  logically,  imity  of  nothing  with  nothing  in  nothing- 
ness) ;    and  importing  into  this  entirely  hollow  ideal 


*  I  ord  is  here  taking  for  granted  a  philosophical  definition  of 
being  which  is,  I  believe,  his  own ;  the  following  chapter  will  make 
its  basis  clear. 


234  W.  E.  FORD 

a  foreign  content,  derived  from  subconscious  con- 
viction of,  or  desire  for,  a  happy  ending  to  the  story  of 
hfe. 

'  Concl. :  The  East  cHngs  to  the  conception  of  unity  at 
all  costs  ;  we  cling  to  individuation  at  all  costs.  Their 
penalty  is  a  scale  of  life  that  cannot  proliferate  beyor.d 
a  certain  point ;  ours,  a  blind,  unordered  proliferatic»n 
that  runs  into  culs-de-sac' 

'  Hyp.'  means  hypothesis,  *  Obj.'  objection,  and 
*  Concl.'  conclusion — Ford's  notes  are  freely  inter- 
spersed with  signposts  of  this  kind,  more  illuminating, 
perhaps,  to  those  familiar  with  his  ways  of  thought 
than  to  the  casual  reader.  As  is  natural,  his  jottin^^s 
are  often  scrappy  and  tantalising  (to  use  again  the  word 
that  these  note-books  continually  suggest) ;  they  marjc, 
not  realisations,  but  only  the  raw  material  for  realisa- 
tions ;  but  Ford  always  shows  the  lines  upon  which  his 
thought  is  working.  *  Dass,'  obviously,  must  have  been 
some  English-speaking  Indian  of  his  acquaintance,  with 
whom  he  seems  to  have  fallen  into  a  discussion  upon 
Oriental  theology.  It  would  be  interesting  to  ha\'e 
full  notes  of  that  discussion. 

It  will  be  clear,  at  any  rate,  that  Ford's  study  of  tlie 
civilised  consciousness  led  him  into  a  consideration, 
not  only  of  the  civilisations  of  other  peoples,  but  )f 
their  philosophies  and  religions.  He  told  me  later,  it 
the  end  of  his  first  journey  to  the  East  (which  took 
him,  as  it  turned  out,  no  further  than  India,  where  /e 
found  the  material  so  inexhaustible  that  China  had  to 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  235 

wait),  how  he  had  consistently  tried  to  keep  his  view 
objective  ;  and  how  persistently  the  conclusion  was 
forced  upon  him  that  the  root  causes  of  varying 
ci\ilised  tendencies  were  subjective — that  men  de- 
ve'oped  their  societies  according  to  their  cast  of 
thought,  and  that  their  thought-moulds  were,  simply, 
thiir  spiritual  beliefs  or  disbehefs.  He  went  out  in 
the;  modem,  scientific  spirit  of  investigation,  prepared 
to  see  different  ways  of  life  explained  by  varying 
conditions  of  life  ;  he  found  himself  more  and  more 
convinced  that  man  moulds  his  circumstances  far 
mc  re  than  his  circumstances  mould  man.  Ultimately, 
the  machinery  of  a  society  did  not  explain  the  society. 
To  discover  the  *  how '  was  interesting  in  itself,  but 
it  hrew  no  hght  upon  the  *  why.'  The  '  why  '  of  a 
civlisation,  he  suspected,  depended  at  bottom  upon 
nothing  but  the  root  philosophy,  conscious  or  sub- 
conscious, of  its  component  people.  The  question 
remained  upon  what  causes  that  philosophy  depended. 
Fold's  provisional  theory  was  that  human  nature 
evolves  a  naturd  and  a  balanced  philosophy  of  life 
of  its  own  accord  if  nothing  artificial  steps  in  to  hinder 
it  in  the  process  ;  in  fact,  that  his  investigation  was  not 
a  S(  arch  for  the  causes  of  a  right  social  philosophy  so 
muh  as  for  the  origins  of  those  checks  and  hindrances 
tha:  make  such  a  philosophy  grow  lopsided  and 
unbalanced. 

Meanwhile  he  had  formed  a  very  strong  conviction 
upon  the  educational  issue  :  that  whatever  our  philo- 


236  W.  E.  FORD 

sophy  of  social  life  is,  we  take  far  too  little  trouble  to 
express  it  in  clear  terms,  either  for  ourselves  or  for  the 
rising  generation.  Our  conception  of  civilisation  is, 
he  maintained,  almost  entirely  subconscious  ;  and  the 
result  is  that  whatever  flaws  exist  in  our  social  theory 
go  undetected  and  are  free  to  spread  unregarded.  V/e 
need,  as  Ford  has  written  at  the  end  of  his  Indian  note- 
book, *  to  teach  a  coherent  system  of  social  philosophy 
in  our  schools.'  The  Indian  child  at  least  learns  a 
religious  philosophy  based  upon  the  single,  clear 
doctrine  of  the  unity  of  all  spirit — an  anchorage  for 
the  social  sense,  though  it  is  an  anchorage  in  a  half- 
truth. 

The  reason  for  our  possessing  no  philosophy  of  social 
life  Ford  traced  directly  to  our  Western  passion  for 
individualism,  for  diversity  of  self-hood — the  other, 
correlative  half-truth,  though  we  do  not  take  the 
trouble  to  express  it  clearly  to  ourselves.  We  cannot 
teach  a  religion,  because  religion  is  at  the  mercy  of 
sects,  and  each  sect  cares  first  and  foremost  for  itself. 
We  cannot  teach  social  science,  because  social  science 
is  a  matter  of  never-ending  debate  between  politiciil 
camps,  and  we  fear  bias  on  the  part  of  teachers  ; 
ultimately,  a  political  camp  is  more  important  to  rs 
than  a  political  truth.  This  was  the  general  line  c  f 
Ford's  analysis — not,  it  must  be  remembered,  a  cor - 
sidered  judgment,  but  a  stage  in  the  process  of  thought: 
upon  which  he  had  embarked. 

I  was  able  to  see  very  little  of  Ford  at  the  time  ci 


m^ 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  237 

IS  first  return  to  England  ;  my  time  was  seldom  my 
own,  and  Ford  was  much  engaged  with  a  project  that 
began,  I  believe,  at  Mr.  Wishart's  suggestion,  and 
cenainly  continued  with  his  help.  It  might  be 
described,  in  its  effect  though  not  in  its  expressed 
intention,  as  a  scheme  to  disseminate  Ford's  educa- 
tioi  al  ideals  by  the  method  of  peaceful  penetration. 
Mr.  Wishart  was  keen  that  Ford  should  begin  to  write 
upcn  education  ;  not  that  he  should  produce  a  treatise, 
or  even  a  text-book  on  method,  but  that  he  should 
sub  nit  articles  on  teaching  to  the  educational  papers, 
and  try  to  instil  the  essence  of  his  ideal  into  the  world 
of  educational  thought.  I  think  that,  besides  his  real 
keeimess  for  the  effectual  spread  of  Ford's  views,  Mr. 
Wishart  was  also  plotting  to  give  him  an  anchorage  in 
England,  and  to  obviate,  or  at  least  postpone,  the  need 
of  another  expedition  to  strange  and  foreign  places. 
Mr.  Wishart  was  not  among  those  who  indulged  in 
reprobation  of  Ford's  joumeyings,  but  he  would  have 
beer  glad  to  keep  his  son-in-law  at  home. 

Ford  was  not  attracted  by  the  idea  of  writing,  as 
yet.  His  business  at  present,  he  said,  was  to  take  in 
rather  than  to  give  out ;  he  did  not  want  to  write 
aboi.t  the  detail  of  education  until  he  had  recast  his 
theory  of  education  as  a  whole,  and  the  recasting  pro- 
cess depended  upon  that  study  of  educational  possi- 
bihties,  in  relation  to  our  present  phase  of  civilised 
life,  which  was  now  absorbing  his  energies.  What  he 
did  aeed  was  to  come  more  closely  into  touch  with 


238  W.  E.  FORD 

representative  people  who,  understanding  sociology 
and  politics,  were  well  disposed  towards  educational 
reform  ;  not  that  he  might  convert  them,  but  that  they 
might  make  more  clear  to  him  what  were  the  opinions 
and  the  hopes  of  the  best  available  minds.  ;Mr. 
Wishart's  acquaintance  with  the  world  of  the  influential 
w^as  enough  to  secure  a  number  of  introductions.  I 
wish  I  could  give  a  distinct  account  of  Ford's  interviews 
with  these  distinguished  persons — some  of  them  men 
who  had  much  to  do  with  the  practical  conduct  of  st^te 
affairs.  But  I  had  only  one  short  talk  with  him  on  the 
subject,  and  a  sketchy  second-hand  account  of  his 
impressions  might  do  injustice  to  individual  public 
servants  who  already  have  quite  enough  ill-informed 
criticism  to  put  up  with.  But,  to  speak  generally, 
Ford  was  depressed  ;  not  by  any  ineptitude  or  lack 
of  vision  in  the  men  with  whom  he  talked,  but  by  the 
obvious  impossibility  of  their  applying  through  public 
machinery  more  than  a  tiny  fraction  of  the  intellectual 
power  and  the  idealism  that  they  had  it  in  them  to 
give  to  the  public  service — and  by  their  manifest 
resignation  to  the  fact. 

*  They  can't  give  their  real  best,'  I  remember  Ford 
saying,  *  and  they  have  given  up  trying.'  They  were 
the  victims,  he  went  on,  of  the  lazy  English  habit  of 
making  an  opposition  between  the  theoretical  and  t  le 
practical,  with  the  result  that  a  man  sees  what  ougit 
to  be  done,  and  then  does  not  do  it  because  there  are 
difficulties  in  the  way.     No  one  but  a  fanatic,  Ford  sa  id 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  239 

(thi;  word  *  fanatic  '  was  not,  to  him,  a  cheap  term  of 
abuse),  could  stand  against  our  general  tendency,  to 
call  ourselves  practical  when  we  make  difficulties  a 
sufficient  excuse  for  inaction.  The  politician,  the 
put  he  servant  in  general,  could  seldom  be  a  fanatic 
and  remain  a  public  servant ;  he  could  only  drift  down 
stream  with  the  sluggish  current,  keeping  his  slowly 
det(  riorating  principles  to  himself  and  becoming  more 
and  more  a  mere  time-server  in  action.  Some  men 
couid  keep  the  fire  of  their  original  sincerity  available, 
half -histrionically,  for  time-serving  purposes ;  and 
these  were  the  most  damgerously  misleading  of  all. 

F')rd  refused  to  blame  the  individuals  in  more  than 
a  vc  ry  limited  degree.  In  the  common  phrase,  it  was 
the  system  that  was  wrong ;  and  at  the  back  of  the 
syst'  !m  was  the  common  way  of  thought  of  the  mass  of 
'  educated '  people.  It  was  unity  of  thought,  he 
insisted,  that  was  lacking;  diversity  of  opinion  was 
the  chief  practical  obstacle  to  the  carrying  out  of 
prin(  iples,  and  we  made  no  study,  educational  or  other, 
of  tl  e  ways  in  which  people  of  diverse  opinions  might 
arrive  at  a  meeting  of  minds.  Oriental  minds  had 
equally  encoimtered  an  obstacle,  and  had  found  their 
unit}'  in  something  httle  better  than  a  common 
fatalism.  Our  resignation  to  the  '  practical '  diffi- 
culties that  come  of  divided  counsels  had,  curiously 
cnou.;h,  the  same  taint  of  fatalism.  '  The  different 
forms  of  fatalism,'  Ford  remarked,  '  are  the  blind 
alley^<  of  spiritual  evolution.' 


240  W.  E.  FORD 

I  gathered  from  Mrs.  Ford  that  some  of  these 
eminent  acquaintances  of  his  were  really  interested  in 
his  way  of  thought  and  anxious  to  see  more  of  him  ; 
and  perhaps  a  region  of  influence  might  have  opeiied 
out  before  him,  as  Mr.  Wishart  hoped,  if  their  deed 
had  been  as  good  as  their  will.  But  a  busy  official, 
however  idealistic  his  private  views,  only  admires  a 
prophet  or  a  philosopher  on  principle;  he  does  not 
cultivate  him  in  practice.  He  is  committed  to  a  v/ay 
of  life  from  which  such  indulgences  are,  in  practice, 
crowded  out.  I  do  not  think  Ford  was  disappointed. 
He  had  seen  enough  for  his  present  purposes  of  a  type 
which  he  wanted  to  understand.  He  wanted  now — 
he  had  been  five  months  at  home — to  continue  his 
voyaging,  and  particularly  to  visit  China. 

Ford's  impressions  of  China,  as  they  are  recorded 
in  the  note-books  (I  shall  have  but  little  other  record 
to  adduce),  are  at  once  peculiarly  rich  and,  if  the 
paradox  will  be  understood,  pecuUarly  vague.  They 
show  more  than  anything  else  his  real  reason  for 
wishing  to  see  outlandish  civilisations  in  being,  not 
merely  to  read  what  other  observers  had  written  about 
them — the  fact,  of  which  he  must  have  been  uncon- 
sciously aware,  that  by  living  for  a  time  in  any  societ  /  of 
people  he  could  absorb,  through  the  pores  of  his  slvin 
as  it  were,  more  of  the  true,  essential  explanatior  of 
their  social  ethic  than  the  trained  Uterary  interpn;ter 
could  express  in  many  volumes.  He  told  me  once  that 
he  could  learn  more  about  the  soul  of  Japan  from  :)ne 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  241 

slight  story  of  Lafcadio  Heam's  telling  than  from  all  the 
Japanese  history  that  is  extant,  though  Heam  is  ad- 
mittedly an  inaccurate  reporter ;  and  I  think  the  reason 
is  that  Heam,  hke  Ford,  possessed  a  certain  imagina- 
tive ^  ympathy  which  could  enter  into  direct  communica- 
tion Aith  the  inner  social  sense  of  a  people,  disregarding 
the  1  multiplicity  of  detail  that  only  obscures  the  vision 
of  th  3  more  pedestrian  if  more  painstaking  investigator. 
At  ajl  events  Ford's  China,  hke  Heam's  Japan,  seems 
to  m3  a  real  place,  queer  but  intelligible  ;  the  China 
and  the  Japan  of  the  careful  European  historian  seem, 
by  cc  mparison,  a  fantastic  myth.  All  of  this  goes  to 
supp(  rt  a  contention  of  Ford's  that  reality,  for  the 
mind,  depends  not  upon  facts  in  themselves,  but  upon 
the  imaginative  understanding  of  facts.  Ford  took 
in  a  f<  w  facts  at  first  hand,  and  understood  them,  and 
arrived  at  a  real  interpretation  of  China  ;  the  historical 
commmtators  who  had  made  a  life's  study  of  China 
gathered  in  many  facts,  chiefly  at  second  or  third  hand, 
and  did  not  understand  them,  and  produced  a  Chinese 
fairy  tale.  But  let  me  give  another  extract  from  the 
note-b  )oks  : — 

*  Th(  most  exciting  thing  about  this  civilisation,  from 
the  modem  European  point  of  view,  is  that  it  has  had 
no  industrial  revolution — ^not  as  an  entire  civilisation. 
India  had  ;  though  the  wind  has  been  tempered  to  the 
Indian  masses  to  a  great  extent.  (Had  Europe  to  bear 
the  firs ;  and  hardest  brunt  because  Europe  alone  was 
so  far  advanced  in  strength  as  only  to  sag  perilously, 

0 


242  W.  E.  FORD 


I 


not  actually  to  break,  under  the  onslaught  ?)  Dis- 
counting the  Oriental  isolation  of  the  unity  ideal — 
the  Oriental  fatalism — China  is  what  Europe  n^as 
before  steam  and  rails  came  in. 

*  Hyp.  Suppose  industrialism  were  now  fully  intro- 
duced into  China,  as  into  Japan,  this  would  be  the 
result :  machinery,  the  whole  complex  mechanisrr  of 
industrial  relations,  would  come  into  being  among  a 
people  whose  way  of  thought,  ingrained  by  centuries 
upon  centuries  of  routine,  would  make  them  utt(n-ly 
incapable  of  interpreting  it.  They  would  not  control 
the  machine ;  the  machine  would  control  them. 
And  their  fatalism  would  make  it  seem  right  to  them  that 
a  machine  should  take  on  this  supremacy. 

*  Did  anything  so  very  different  happen  when 
industrialism  made  its  swift  conquest  of  Europe  ?  We 
had  our  own  fatalism — our  belief  in  the  absolute  and 
sole  necessity  of  individuation  ;  and  the  Manchester 
School  was  the  consequence.  Let  diversity  of  in- 
dustrial interest  have  free  play,  we  said  ;  unity  of 
interest  will  settle  itself.  In  other  words,  let  unity  of 
industrial  interest  go  hang.  The  Chinaman  would  say, 
in  effect,  This  great  Spirit  of  Machinery  has  taken  liold 
of  us  and  possessed  us  ;  it  is  no  use  for  us,  mere  cogs 
in  its  wheels,  to  protest.  In  other  words,  let  the 
working  individual  go  hang.  On  this  hypothesis  the 
result  in  the  two  cases  is  curiously  the  same.  " 

'  Conf?-  Factory  workers  in  Nanchong  seem  to  :.howl 

*  Confirmation  (of  the  hypothesis). 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  243 

exactly  the  pessimism  and  the  resignation  of  EngHsh 
sweated  operatives.  The  difference  is  in  the  mode  of 
rehe:  :  the  EngHshman  takes  gin  and  becomes, 
fallaciously,  a  free-bom  Briton  again  ;  the  Chinaman 
takes  opium  and  identifies  himself  with  "  the  circum- 
ambient inane."  To  the  one,  a  false  individuation — to 
the  ether,  a  false  sense  of  his  unity  with  everything. 

'  (No — not  wholly  false.  Stolen,  rather  ;  stolen  from 
the  man's  inner  consciousness.  He  is  living,  at  these 
mom-nts,  upon  his  spiritual  capital.) 

*  C<  >mpare  Chinese  peasantry,  now,  with  English 
peasantry  before  the  industrial  revolution.  Discount- 
ing tl  e  vast  difference  between  their  views  of  what  is 
ultimately  important,  their  life,  in  detail,  is  much  of  a 
muchness.  The  elementary  fact  that  the  people 
depen  i  on  the  land,  and  the  land  on  the  people,  is  at  the 
root  )f  the  people's  contentment  and  the  land's 
fecimciity.  Imagine  the  mass  of  Chinese  peasantry 
swept  into  the  industrial  vortex,  and  you  imagine 
an  incalculable  upheaval  and  uprooting.  That  up- 
heaval and  uprooting  has  happened  to  us ;  it  is 
wonde  ful  that  we  are  not  in  a  worse  mess  than  we 
are.' 

No  s  pecimen  from  Ford's  note-books  can  render  the 
cumulative  effect  that  the  whole  mass  of  his  notes  has 
for  me,  who  knew  his  way  of  thinking,  and  can  see  the 
relatioii  between  his  small,  subtly  casual  allusions  and 
the  gen  iral  trend  of  his  thought.  The  above  quotation, 
now  th  it  I  have  copied  it  into  my  manuscript,  seems 


244  W.  E.  FORD 

vague  and  purposeless  out  of  its  context — which  is  the 
haunting  meaning  that  the  whole  body  of  his  notes 
dimly  conveys  to  me.  The  notes  in  themselves,  as 
detailed  excerpts,  such  as  the  two  that  I  have  given, 
have  comparatively  little  meaning.  Ford  put  these 
jottings  down  for  his  own  eye — they  were  to  be  jiis 
raw  material  when  he  came  to  write  his  book,  and  he 
deliberately  put  them  down  in  the  raw.  But  perha  ps 
the  reader  will  have  both  the  patience  and  the  insight 
to  see  in  them,  at  least,  the  movement  of  a  mind 
that  always  looked  through  seemings  to  realities,  and 
lived  for  the  true  concerns  of  life. 

I  make  no  attempt  to  portray  Ford's  impressic>ns 
of  India  and  China — those  romantically  picturesque 
civilisations — in  their  picturesque  aspect.  It  was  not 
that  aspect  that  concerned  him.  He  wanted  to  arrive 
at  the  truth  about  these  civilisations  as  it  affects,  or 
should  affect,  our  own  idea  of  civilisation.  I  do  not 
profess  to  give  his  conclusions  ;  those  he  could  only 
have  worked  out  for  himself.  I  only  hope  to  give  a 
hint,  and  a  very  slight  hint,  of  his  working.  The 
tragedy  is  that  he  himself  was  not  permitted  to  work 
out  his  conclusions  in  full. 

He  came  home  from  China,  as  from  India,  iiot 
because  material  was  exhausted — far  from  it —  )ut 
because  he  seemed  to  have  been  long  enough  av^ay. 
And  he  came  back  resolved  to  go  out  again,  presently, 
to  Japan — the  coimtry  where  East  and  West  have  jiiet 
in  an  alliance  closer  and  more  baffling  to  the  mind  tjan 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  245 

can  be  discovered  in  any  other  comer  of  the  globe. 
*  Understand  Japan,*  he  said  to  me,  *  and  you  under- 
stand the  whole  of  the  modem  world.'  Japan,  he  went 
on  to  say,  would  probably  show  itself  to  be  a  crude 
mixture  of  Eastem  and  Westem  influences  ;  but  there 
one  ought  to  see,  not  by  any  means  a  new  and  a  per- 
fect ^d  civilisation,  but  the  embryo  of  a  civilisation 
begotten  by  the  West  upon  the  East.  He  did  not  look 
to  Japan  as  an  ideal,  but  rather,  almost,  as  an  exem- 
plary waming.  It  might  be  the  privilege  of  the 
Japanese  to  show  us  all  how  not  to  do  it ;  in  any  case, 
he  n  eant  to  find  out. 

This  time  his  stay  in  London  was  a  short  one — ^less 
than  two  months  ;  and  he  gave  all  his  time  to  his  wife 
and  children.  It  was  only  because  he  wanted  to  be 
with  them  again  that  he  had  come  home.  It  is  amusing 
that  one  of  the  friends  who  most  deplored  his  absences 
abroc  d  was  highly  scandaUsed  at  his  extravagance  in 
unde:  taking  a  joumey  home  for  so  short  a  period.  It 
was  not  that  he  could  not  afford  it,  nor  even  that  he  was 
spending  Mrs.  Ford's  money — if  it  had  been  any  busi- 
ness ( f  his  friends  to  speculate  upon  these  questions — 
it  wa5  simply  the  uncomfortable  sense  of  a  dispropor- 
tion letween  the  length  and  cost  of  a  joumey  home 
from  the  East  and  back  and  a  stay  in  England  of 
merel}'  a  few  weeks.  The  value  of  those  weeks  was 
not  to  be  measured  by  their  number ;  and  they  were 
destin<id  to  be  a  very  precious  memory  to  those  for 
whose  sake  he  returned. 


246  W.  E.  FORD 

I  saw  Ford  twice  during  this  time  ;  and  at  our  first 
meeting  he  was  full  of  humorous  comments  upon  his 
friend's  letter  of  expostulation.  It  was  part,  he  said, 
of  the  eternal  discussion  whether  things  are  more 
square  than  they  are  pink.  The  expense  of  his  journey 
represented . one  value;  the  happiness  of  a  domestic 
reunion  represented  another  and  a  wholly  differeiit 
value,  as  different  as  the  quality  of  pinkness  is  from 
the  quality  of  squareness.  People  were  for  ever  trying 
to  measure  incommensurable  things  against  one  an- 
other, especially  to  translate  into  terms  of  quantify 
things  that  can  only  be  estimated  in  terms  of  quality. 
He  said  that  he  saw  himself,  during  his  stay  in  England, 
in  the  character  of  Lewis  Carroll's  engine-driver,  whose 
time  was  worth  a  thousand  pounds  a  minute.  In  his 
own  case,  the  actual  value  of  a  minute  or  an  hour  or 
a  day  of  his  presence  at  home  to  himself,  to  his  wile, 
to  either  of  his  children,  was  absolutely  linmeasurable, 
even  in  terms  of  quality,  by  any  one  outside  the  family  ; 
but  when  you  had  a  value  widely  accepted  and  in  a 
sense  understood  by  the  public,  its  expression  in  terns 
of  quantity  might  be  just  as  impossible.  Ford  adduc  cd 
the  case  of  a  short  poem  in  the  evening  paper  which  he 
had  brought  home  with  him,  a  httle  lyric  in  two  fo  ir- 
line  stanzas,  full,  he  declared,  of  the  true  creat  ve 
spirit.  (The  poet's  name  was  unknown  to  me,  as  to 
Ford  ;  not  long  ago  I  came  upon  the  verses  again,  in 
a  volume  now  cherished  by  those  who  have  a  see.ng 
eye  for  modem  poetry,  as  the  work  of  a  master  of 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  247 

delicate  fantasy  in  rhyme. i)  Ford  held  out  the 
shet^t.  *  What  is  this  worth,  in  terms  of  quantity  ?  ' 
he  asked.  '  Fourpence  a  line — four  eights  are  thirty- 
two — two  and  eight  pence.'  As  to  the  real  value  in 
terns  of  quahty,  who  could  judge  ?  The  thrill  of 
pleasure  that  it  had  given  to  us  was  a  spark  from 
the  authentic  fires  of  poetry ;  but,  again,  it  might 
be  c,  spark  that  would  gleam  for  a  little  and  die  out, 
a  small  shooting  star  in  an  August  sky,  or  it  might  be 
a  nc  w  fixed  star  among  the  hosts  in  the  poetic  firma- 
ment, to  be  registered  upon  the  charts  of  astronomer- 
criti:s  of  poetry  for  as  long  as  word-constellations  in 
our  language  should  endure.  In  the  lesser  event,  even, 
its  V  due  could  be  gauged  by  no  quantitative  foot-rule  of 
any  one's  devising.  '  The  qualitative  is  the  absolute,' 
said  Ford  ;  a  saying  upon  which  I  have  often  reflected 
since  this  talk,  and  always  with  a  feeling  that  Ford  is 
tantalising  me  again — that  a  world  of  meaning  hes 
behind  the  phrase,  of  meaning  which  Ford  ought  to 
have  lived  to  elucidate  more  fully.  At  all  events,  I 
feel  ( ertain  that  the  converse  of  his  statement  is  true  : 
that  the  quantitative  is  the  impermanent — that  any- 
thing which  can  be  weighed  and  measured  in  terms  of 
quan:ity  is  of  its  nature  fleeting,  and  of  its  nature 
unsai  isfying  to  the  spirit  of  man.  The  quantitative  is, 
by  de  finition,  the  finite. 

Th  i  second  time  that  I  saw  Ford  during  this  return 
to  Ei  gland,  and  the  hist  time  that  I  was  to  talk  with- 
»  Walter  de  la  Mare. 


248  W.  E.  FORD 

him  before  his  departure  for  Japan,  was  within  a  wec^k 
of  his  saiUng.  I  was  preoccupied  with  my  own 
concerns.  I  had  the  choice  before  me  of  two  careen; ; 
the  one  ambitious,  in  the  sense  in  which  ambition  means 
the  seeking  of  money,  the  other  artistic,  in  the  senile 
in  which  art  means  the  satisfaction  of  one's  own  inner 
needs.  I  laid  my  position — of  which  the  details  nee  d 
not  concern  the  reader — before  Ford.  The  result  of 
the  otherwise  unimportant  incident  was  that  Ford 
gave  me  his  mind  about  the  perennial  conflict  in  the 
estimation  of  a  youngish  man  between  ideals  and 
practical  necessities,  in  terms  which  ought,  I  think, 
to  be  definitely  stated  and  underlined,  though  the 
attempt  to  restate  the  principles  that  Ford  could 
express  and  illustrate  with  such  easy  power  is  an 
undertaking  full  of  difficulty. 

To  begin  with,  he  insisted  that  all  conflict  between 
the  ideal  and  the  necessary  is  unnatural  confhct.  It 
is  of  the  same  nature  as  the  opposition  between  the 
theoretical  and  the  practical.  None  the  less,  that 
unnatural  opposition,  that  unnatural  conflict  is  con- 
tinually present  in  our  civilisation  :  we  must  never 
forget  that  it  is  there,  but  we  must  never  forget  thjit 
it  is  unnatural.  Ford  imagined  as  an  instance  the 
case  of  an  artist,  a  literary  man,  who  wants  to  wri'  e 
literature  of  one  kind,  while  his  agent  or  publisher, 
representing  the  pubhc  taste,  wants  him  to  wrie 
literature  (if  it  be  literature)  of  another  kind.  His 
artistic  sense  demands  that  he  should  write  what  he 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  249 

\\  ants  to  write,  and  his  artistic  sense  is  wrong,  to  this 
extent :  it  is  also  his  business  to  say  what  other  people 
\\ant,  or  need,  to  have  said.  Real  art  is  never  bom 
o '  the  artistic  sense  alone  ;  it  springs  from  a  fusion 
o  the  artistic  with  the  social  sense.  Undoubtedly  the 
artist  often  knows  best,  not  what  is  merely  wanted, 
b  it  what  is  truly  needed  ;  but  that  is  not  because  of 
his  artistic  sense  alone,  but  because  his  social  sense 
is  often  finer  than  that  of  his  agent  or  publisher — in 
w  10m  artistic  and  social  ideals  are  alike  merged  in  some 
degree  in  commercial  considerations. 

A  writer,  so  Ford  declared,  has  no  need  to  com- 
promise between  his  artistic  conscience  and  the  need 
fo  making  money.  Indeed,  as  a  rule,  he  only  falls 
between  two  stools  if  he  tries  to  do  so.  What  he  needs 
is  not  a  compromise,  but  a  imity  ;  and  that  not  between 
an  and  money-making,  but  between  art  and  an  under- 
stcnding  of  the  people  to  whom  the  art  must  speak. 
Mc  ney-making  must  be  incidental.  '  If  an  artist  tries 
to  aim  straight  at  money,'  said  Ford,  *  he  will  miss  it. 
Th  J  pull  of  his  art  will  deflect  his  aim.' 

Under  the  vague  term  '  artist '  Ford  tended  to  in- 
cluie  all  those  who  follow  a  given  activity  simply  and 
soldy  for  its  own  sake.  The  others  were  those  who 
hac-  fame  or  money  for  their  chief  objective.  The 
desire  for  fame  in  itself — apart  from  the  desire  for 
rec(>gnition  and  love  from  those  for  whom  one  has 
woiked — ^he  regarded  as  a  disease  of  the  mind,  in- 
stancing the  number  of  great  seekers  after  fame  who 


^1 


250  W.  E.  FORD 

have  been  epileptics.  A  desire  for  money,  on  the 
other  hand,  was  often  worthy  of  entire  respect.  In  a 
perfect  civiHsation,  he  said,  we  should  all  do  our  work 
for  its  own  sake  and  for  the  sake  of  our  neighbours, 
and  our  material  reward  would  come  incidentally  ; 
in  civilisation  as  it  is,  the  animal  law  of  a  struggle  for 
existence  is  only  very  partially  superseded,  and  most 
of  the  money  that  is  the  agreed  token  for  food,  shelter, 
and  security  is  scrambled  for  rather  than  earned.  This, 
being  so.  Ford  was  clear  that  the  element  of  scramble 
must  be  allowed  for — and  kept  in  its  proper  place. 
The  trouble  was,  as  Ford  said,  that  there  appeared  to 
be  a  law  of  '  once  a  scrambler,  always  a  scrambler  '  ; 
the  world  might  be  roughly  divided  into  scramblers, 
earners,  and  artists,  all  remaining  fairly  true  to  type. 

The  difficulty  was  to  know  when  to  stop  scrambling. 
Almost  every  one  had  the  right  instinct  about  this  ; 
almost  every  one  said  to  himself,  *  I  need  so  much  foi- 
security  ;  I  will  make  so  much  and  then  stop.'  And 
almost  every  one,  succeeding  in  the  money-scramble, 
found  himself  unable  to  stop.  Ford  put  this  down 
to  two  causes.  First,  *  scrambling  '  satisfies  an  instinct 
older  than  humanity,  the  instinct  developed  througli 
aeons  of  evolution  through  struggle  ;  and  the  appetit:; 
of  that  instinct  grows  with  exercise.  Second,  there  is 
the  difficulty  of  persuading  the  stopping-place  t ) 
remain  fixed.  A  man  aims  at  a  modest  ;f300  a  yea: . 
Starting  from  the  basis  of  a  very  simple  way  of  hfc, 
he  sees  £300  a  year  as,  upon  that  basis,  a  comfortab]^; 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  251 

assurance  of  security.  But  unless  he  is  a  person  of 
great  simplicity,  or  of  great  determination  and  fixity 
of  purpose,  his  basis,  his  scale  of  life,  rises  with  every 
in:rease  in  his  income  ;  and  when  he  hcis  his  £300  a 
year  he  is  already  living  on  a  £300  a  year  basis,  and 
thinks  how  pleasant  it  would  be  to  feel  really  com- 
fo  table  and  secure — with  an  income  of,  say,  £600  a 
year.  And  so  the  process  goes  on,  without  limit ;  and 
so  Ford  considered,  it  was  likely  to  go  on  until  society 
sh  )uld  take  account  of  the  sound  instinct  for  modera- 
ticn  with  which  most  people  enter  upon  a  money- 
making  career,  and  should  give  it  expression  by 
sei  ting  a  limit  to  wealth,  thus  protecting  the  individual 
ag  dnst  his  own  lower  instincts. 

This,  I  suggested,  would  aboUsh  capitalism — would 
it  not  involve  a  mechanical  State-Socialism  ?  Pos- 
sitly.  Ford  thought,  not  at  all  necessarily.  Private 
ownership  had  had  its  use,  he  thought.  The  time  had 
already  come  when  an  industry  could  be  owned  entirely 
by  small  shareholders  and  managed  by  salaried  experts. 
Possibly,  in  the  future,  the  workers  would  become  the 
she  reholders — and  the  shareholder  class,  through  an 
education  that  would  rouse  the  mass  of  the  genteel  out 
of  dleness  and  apathy,  would  become  workers  as  well. 
Thit,  he  was  inclined  to  think,  would  be  in  the  long 
nil  the  solution  of  the  industrial  problem  ;  but  it  would 
be  1  very  long  run.  By  that  time  industry  would  have 
become  an  art,  and  grab  and  scramble  would  have 
bee  n   quite  superseded  ;    a   consummation   desirable 


252  W.  E.  FORD 

enough  in  all  conscience,  but  not  likely  to  come  about 
in  a  generation  or  two. 

This  was  the  last  talk  that  I  had  with  Ford.  He 
sailed  for  Japan  in  the  spring  of  1913.  For  some  weeks 
after  his  landing  there  his  letters  were  dispatched 
regularly  every  mail,  as  usual ;  and  as  usual  they  told 
Mrs.  Ford  of  Httle  but  his  actual  movements — he  was 
never  a  descriptive  letter-writer,  and  he  seldom 
mentioned  the  progress  of  his  investigations,  keeping 
this  material  for  his  note-books  and  for  conversation 
when  he  should  return.  He  seldom  wrote  to  any  one 
but  his  wife,  and,  occasionally,  his  elder  girl ;  and  he 
wrote  rather  as  husband  and  father  than  as  traveller 
and  thinker.  Mrs.  Ford  allows  me  to  publish  a  part 
of  one  brief  letter,  which  has  only  the  sad  distinction 
of  being  his  last : — 

*  This  is  a  quiet  little  up-country  village.  I  have 
got  all  that  I  can  hold  for  the  present  out  of  the 
towns  and  the  English-speaking  Japs,  and  I  want 
to  get  the  atmosphere  of  the  un-Europeanised  rustic 
life.  Doing  without  an  interpreter  already,  with 
results  that  strain  the  splendiferous  native  courtesy 
at  times.  Jolly  quarters,  with  a  fine  view — I  'm 
seeing  plenty  of  it,  being  tied  by  the  leg  with  a  chill 
of  sorts — getting  better  now,  after  a  couple  of  days' 
fever.  I  really  wished  you  were  here  the  day 
before  yesterday  I  .  .  .' 

After  this  letter,  silence.     Ford  had  always  written 


BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY  253 


^■by  every  mail,  and  when  two  mails  had  passed  with 
^Hno  further  word  from  him,  Mrs.  Ford  was  anxious 
^^  enough  to  have  word  sent,  provisionally,  to  the  British 
Coisul  at  Tokyo,  asking  that  inquiries  might  be  made 
un  ess  a  cable  from  her  should  have  let  him  know 
meanwhile  that  aU  was  well.  Still  no  news  arriving, 
she  cabled  to  the  consul  on  the  day  when  the  informa- 
tio  1  sent  by  mail  was  due  to  reach  him,  asking  that 
inquiries  should  be  pushed  forward  without  delay. 
Th'TC  followed  another  fortnight  of  suspense,  and 
then  the  answering  cable  arrived.  Ford  had  died  and 
had  been  buried  several  weeks  before  in  the  little 
villige  from  which  he  had  last  written. 

Confirmatory  details  by  the  mail  following  the  cable 
told  httle  mote.  The  foreign  visitor  had  been  stricken 
dovn  by  a  fever,  had  rallied  strongly,  and  then  had 
had  a  quick  and  fatal  relapse.  The  village  people  had 
guarded  his  few  possessions,  and  these  were  being  sent 
home.  (Ultimately  only  his  pocket-book,  sent  separ- 
ately by  registered  mail,  arrived  ;  the  thing  of  most 
value,  the  notes  that  he  had  had  time  to  make  in 
Japm,  were  lost  with  the  main  consignment,  no  one 
could  tell  how.)  There  was  no  hint  of  any  final  note 
or  niessage  ;  at  Mrs.  Ford's  request  the  envoy  from  the 
Consulate  made  a  second  journey  to  the  village  to  make 
sure  of  this,  and  learned  that  Ford  had  passed  from 
a  return  of  high  fever  into  imconsciousness,  from  which 
he  did  not  awaken. 
I  believe  that  Ford  died  with  many  secrets  locked, 


254  W.  E.  FORD 


^1 


half-solved,  in  his  mind,  many  half-worked  problems 
whose  solution  would  have  brought  him  widespread 
gratitude  among  thinking  people.  It  is  part  of  my 
sorrow  to  be  able  to  present  only  so  slight  and  vague 
a  hint  even  of  the  nature  of  the  great  undertaking  in 
the  midst  of  which  he  was  cut  off.  This  was  to  have 
been  the  practical  outcome,  the  practical  service,  of 
his  essential  philosophy,  his  essential  view  of  man 
and  of  the  universe.  Of  that  philosophy  itself,  so  far 
as  Beresford  and  I  have  been  able  to  reconstruct  it 
from  our  memory  of  his  casual  expositions  (Beresford 
was  fortunate  in  having  one  really  exhaustive  talk  with 
him  about  it),  the  next  chapter  will  give  some  account. 
Ol  the  man  I  will  attempt  no  concluding  panegyric  ; 
the  memory  of  his  inner  nature  is  the  sacred  possession 
of  those  who  have  lost  him. 


PART   III 

\  FEW  NOTES  ON  FORD'S  PHILOSOPHY 
By  J.  D.  Beresford 


W.  E.  FORD 


I 


ooofine  myself  as  (ar  as  possible  to  the  instrument 

iimon  language  understood  by  the  plain  man. 

•  ^  lad  the  same  difficulty.    I  have  before  me  at 

>  moment  a  letter  that  he  wrote  to  me  when  I  was 

'irkstone  in  the  summer  of  1905,  and  I  quote 

pMMge  here  as  the  true  apology  for  my  method. 

am  oooloundedly  bothered  by  my  search  for  terms,' 

^'Htcs  apropos  of  t!-  -^ii----'-.  .]  consolation  he 

< -scribing  for  my  .  .  -n, '  and  I  don't 

M  sit  down  and  invent  a  new  terminology.    So 

Iw  s>'mpathetic  with  me  and  not  allow  the 

.  c  oi  old  associations  to  bias  you  if  you  find 

'  "it,'  uf  '  spirit '  and  '  matter/  for  example.    I 

l*c  using  them  as  convenient  little  labels  like 

is  of  the  Elizabethan  stage.' 

tore,  firstly,  that  my  statement  will 
LM.  ui  ;  t     the  spx'cialist ;  and  secondly,  that^ 

mav    :  civcd   a    lauliy   impression   of^ 

,  pli .  .J  may  pass  on  a  second  ren( 

iwill  be  still  more  distorted.    This  resort 

'     so   se 
mic 
luches  too  various  a  respo] 
ferent  leadei^.     When^ 
a  Castle/  the  av(  r 
his  experience, 
►wn  constructioj 
»t   excursi 
Lving, 


utttii^'ii       i'y        viiv       u\.<.»vAv 


A  FEW  NOTES  ON  FORD'S  PHILOSOPHY    2 


as  I,  too,  may  have  substituted  Windsor  for  For 
Kenilworth,  and  may  succeed  in  nothing  more  th 
creating  the  impression  of  a  drop  scene,  I  feel  cautiou 
incUned  to  warn  all  whom  it  may  concern  that  1 
exegesis,  no  less  than  my  personal  impression  of  1 
philosopher  himself,  is  coloured  by  my  own  tendenci 

Lastly,  the  problem  is  still  more  complicated  by  1 
fact  that  Ford's  main  proposition  is  as  pure  an  ess 
in  a  prior  ism  as  I  ever  came  across.  When  he  fi 
began  to  hint  at  his  philosophy  to  me,  in  1904,  he  h 
not  read  Bergson  ;  but  he  had  completely  anticipai 
the  method  of  intuition  prescribed  in  the  Introd. 
Hon  to  Metaphysics.  Hence  his  j|^^^|ry  thesis 
founded  on  no  sort  of  i^^^^^p^^^^^^^Hiay  app- 
at  first  sight  to  cortr^^^^^^B^^^^^P^^pragmc 
^ests  of  social  bei 

But  my  apol^^^^^^HI^^^^^^Kl  the  ^ 
of  necessity  ; 
my   atteni)  ■ 
rests 


'gare 
lentr 
of  mate 


26o  W.  E.  FORD 

when  he  ranged  beyond  the  last-known  fence  of  mole- 
cular physics,  he  implied  a  theory  of  impeded, 
temporarily  crystallised  force  as  the  ultimate  atom. 
I  remember  receiving  an  impression  of  the  '  knot  in 
the  ether,'  in  unmaterial  terms,  as  force  confined  by  its 
own  superabundance  of  energy,  as  some  indefinable 
element  piling  up  to  visibility.  But  as  I  attempt  to 
translate  the  intuition  the  matter  inevitably  becomes, 
temporal  and  spatial,  and  it  seems  that  no  other  figure; 
is  possible. 

Nevertheless,  I  believe  that  we  are  approaching  some; 
expression  of  that  hypothecated  urgency  behind  Ufe. 
The  academic  philosophers  have  had  their  uses.  The}' 
have  trained  the  mind  to  dissociate  itself  from  th(; 
concrete  example.  And  if  no  academic  philosophy  has 
yet  succeeded  in  formulating  any  idea  of  a  *  first  cause,' 
many  philosophers  have  helped  us  to  clear  the  field  of 
thought. 

I  like  to  think  that  we  are  feeling  our  way  to  a  new 
form  in  this  kind.  Bergson  has  failed  us  in  many 
respects,  but  he  has  come  nearer  than  any  writer  of 
my  generation  to  carry  the  statement  of  his  thesis  into 
the  domain  of  poetry.  His  work  has,  in  fact,  what  M] . 
Ransome  would  call  a  potential  value.  Behind  man*/ 
of  his  passages  in  Creative  Evolution  lies  a  power  c/f 
suggestion  that  is  more  valuable  than  the  logical 
demonstration.  And  it  is  for  this  reason  that  all  h  3 
many  exegetes  have  failed  to  do  more  than  confu^3 
our  hopeful  vision  of  his  principles.     Bergson's  log  : 


A  FEW  NOTES  ON  FORD'S  PHILOSOPHY    261 

caiTies  us  no  further  than  the  logic  of  Hegel,  but 
Bergson's  statement  tends  to  display  a  new  possibiHty. 
Wlien  logic  and  mathematics  and  the  language  of 
accuracy  can  carry  us  no  further,  poetry,  music,  and 
evtn  the  graphic  arts  may  complete  the  expression. 

So,  too,  in  these  haphazard  notes  on  Ford's  theory 
of  :ausation,  I  can  only  hope  to  convey  some  vague, 
em  )racing  impression  of  that  postulated  first  cause 
which  has  found  such  other  names  and  such  other 
sigijficances  as  God,  the  First  Cause,  the  Life  Force, 
the  Elan  Vital,  or,  as  I  unthinkingly  put  it,  the  urgency 
behind  life — a  definition  that  1  should  be  sorry  to 
deft  nd  philosophically.  I  use  it,  now,  neither  poetic- 
ally nor  scientifically,  but  because  it  satisfied  my  need 
as  I  wrote  it,  and  I  hope  that  it  may  by  its  very  vague- 
ness and  inaccuracy  serve  my  purpose  of  avoiding  the 
ove]  definite. 

To  Ford  this  urgency  was  all '  good '  in  the  sense  that 
it  was  beyond  criticism  in  its  essence,  however  various 
in  ( xpression ;  and  his  first  and  most  important 
prin:iple  was  that  right  thinking,  judgment  and  action 
are  attained  only  by  permitting  the  freest  possible 
expression  of  the  tendencies  that  seek  to  manifest 
then  selves  as  a  liberation  of  this  antecedent  urge. 

In  the  parable  of  force  piling  itself  up  till  it  becomes 
comj)rehensible  as  matter,  we  find  our  Ormuzd  in 
liberation,  our  Ahriman  in  impediment  or  constriction. 
So  ir  the  moral  analogy,  free  expression  presents  an 
aspec  t  of  right ;    judgment  and  inhibition  an  aspect 


262  W.  E.  FORD 

of  wrong.  Consequently,  right  and  wrong  are  never 
absolutes,  but  only  degrees  of  resistance. 

It  follows  as  a  kind  of  corollary  to  this  that  each 
check  or  impediment  to  the  free  expression  of  this 
active  urgency  behind  life  remains  temporarily  as  a 
further  complex  that  must  ultimately  be  resolved.  I 
remember  that  on  one  occasion  Ford  took  up  the  old 
analogy  of  the  river,  postulating  that  one  must  not 
think  of  the  current  as  a  movement  of  particles,  but  as 
an  abstract  force  thrusting  forward,  a  force  that  must 
not  be  confused  in  this  instance  with  any  physical 
theory  of  gravity.  In  that  metaphor  the  impediments 
took  the  shape  of  the  whirlpools  and  eddies,  and 
for  a  time  he  elaborated  the  figure  and  made  me  se(i 
how  each  vortex  must  be  resolved,  each  resistance  over- 
come, by  the  ultimate  force  of  a  stream  of  energy  that 
could  be  momentarily  diverted  but  never,  even 
momentarily,  checked.  I  had  a  fleeting  vision  of  som(i 
eternal  persistence  whose  direction  and  temporahty 
could  only  be  measured  by  the  ephemeral  whirlpool  it 
created.  And  then  Ford  dismissed  the  whole  metaphor 
with  one  sweeping  movement  of  his  arm.  *  It 's  just 
one  figure  out  of  a  million,'  he  said  ;  *  the  only  point  cif 
it  is  to  show  that  any  figure  one  may  choose  has  the 
same  interpretation.* 

But  if  that  remark  of  his  is  true,  it  does,  indeed, 
contain  some  element  of  proof.  If  we  can  find  eviden(  3 
of  the  same  theory  in  every  material  illustration,  v  e 
may  logically  accept  the  theory  on  the  mere  ground  of 


A  FEW  NOTES  ON  FORD'S  PHILOSOPHY    263 

probability ;  we  are  in  sight  of  a  hypothesis  that 
ex])lains  all  the  phenomena. 

In  a  somewhat  inconsequent  series  of  notes  such  as 
this,  anything  hke  a  general  argument  would  be  out 
of  place.  I  can  only  suggest  and  leave  the  immense 
rar  ge  of  extensions  and  objections  to  those  who  are 
willing  to  work  in  the  cause  of  truth.  Nevertheless,  I 
mi.st  pause  for  a  moment  to  point  out  that  in  certain 
api)lications  Ford's  general  theory  does  help  us  to 
plainer  statement. 

The  theological  problem  of  the  origin  of  evil,  for 
ex£  mple,  is  resolved  into  simpler  terms.  Ex  hypothesi, 
this  primitive  urge  is  non-moral,  and  whatever  appears 
to  IIS  as  evil  is  only  an  instance  of  a  degree  of  temporary 
imj  sediment.  On  the  other  hand,  if  we  push  the 
problem  further  back,  and  inquire  whence  came  the 
firs'  hindrance,  whence  the  original  superfluity  that 
becime  translated  into  matter,  we  may  find  some 
explanation  and  satisfaction  in  the  contemplation  of 
our  principle  as  at  once  rhythmic  and  eternal.  We 
may  think  of  it  as  some  immeasurable  wave  that 
pulses  for  ever,  without  origin  or  cHmax ;  and  we, 
the  infinitely  small  presentation  of  a  human  resultant, 
ma}  find  ourselves  at  a  node  of  accumulation,  buoying 
oun  elves  with  the  certainty  of  a  heaven  of  present 
expansion. 

F  )r  the  amplitude  of  our  imagined  wave  is  so  vast 
that  it  may  contain  the  birth,  growth,  and  dissolution 
of  a  universe.     In  one  great  throb  of  our  single  element, 


264  W.  E.  FORD 

matter  may  come  into  being,  pass  through  its  myriad 
forms  of  presentation  and  dissolve  again  into  the 
serenity  of  the  All-thing  that  is,  in  its  essence,  immut- 
able. No  conception  of  our  material  time  is  great 
enough  to  measure  such  a  cycle. ^  Our  little  measure 
of  revolution  about  a  central  sun  must  be  so  indefinitely 
multipUed  that  the  human  mind  must  forget  that 
unit  before  the  larger  conception  can  be  realised.  And 
if  the  unit  grow  to  the  passing  of  a  solar  system,  it  is 
still  too  small  to  redcon  the  comparative  eternity  of  a 
single  movement  of  our  primary  element.  Yet  now, 
and  with  one  effortless  turn  of  the  imagination,  the; 
reckoning  can  be  made  if  we  do  but  grasp  the  thought 
that  by  its  extension  all  time  may  be  eliminated  ; 
drowned  in  the  greater  infinity  as  the  thought  of  a 
single  second  is  drowned  in  the  conception  of  a  million 
years.  That  is  as  far,  perhaps,  as  we  may  reach 
towards  our  ehmination  of  the  concept  of  time,  while 
we  are  still  so  confronted  and  harassed  by  this  per- 
petual cage  of  matter.  But  if  the  method  fail  to 
achieve  its  ultimate  object,  namely,  the  complete 
elimination  of  the  time  measure,  it  may  serve,  as 
philosophy  has  served,  to  dissociate  the  mind  from 
a  concrete  example. 

Indeed  I  would  find  my  excuse  for  this  picture 
language  in  a  continual  clash  of  metaphor.     If  a  singL 

*  I  write  the  word  'cycle'  deliberately,  since  in  this  relation    i 
may   change  the  metaphor  without  apology.      The  figure  is  ir 
essential.      The  All-thing  embraces  every  form,  while  for  ever 
remaining  itself  formless. 


A  FEW  NOTES  ON  FORD'S  PHILOSOPHY    265 

imige  is  chosen  and  elaborated,  it  tends  to  crystallise 
as  the  idea  in  itself.  But  if  we  have  no  sooner  pictured 
a  stream  than  we  find  the  thought  of  it  changed  to  a 
wave,  to  a  wheel,  to  a  measure  of  time,  we  have  some 
ho])e  of  momentarily  touching  the  abstract  as  a  result 
of  our  confusion.  Just  in  this  manner  do  our  thoughts 
oitm  reach  out  more  profoundly  when  a  demand  is 
made  upon  our  immediate  attention.  In  conversation, 
while  we  are  reading,  in  the  midst  of  some  active  em- 
ployment, the  vividly  enticing  idea  will  often  present 
itself,  and  we  long  for  instant  freedom  in  order  that 
the  idea  may  be  wooed  to  fuller  expression.  But  when 
the  distraction  is  removed,  when  we  have  escaped  it 
ma  y  be  our  companion  or  even  quickly  laid  down  our 
book,  some  magic  is  gone  from  our  thought,  the  wonder 
slijs  from  us,  and  that  which  had  been  for  a  moment 
vit  d  and  entrancing  becomes  the  flat  simulacrum  pro- 
jec  ;ed  by  a  labouring  imagination. 

And  for  this  reason  I  have  a  hope  that  among  the 
tor:uring  clash  of  metaphors,  the  mind  of  the  reader 
may  find  some  moment  of  escape  ;  and  approach,  if  only 
for  the  tiniest  instant,  the  idea  of  that  shapeless,  timeless 
abstraction  which  was  Ford's  intuition  of  the  primary 
urge  behind  life. 

I  come  to  a  second  application  of  his  theory — and 
it  J  hall  be  my  only  other  instance — by  way  of  the 
problem  of  evolution. 

\vTien  the  theologists  presented  our  element  in  the 
shape  of  God,  and  gave  Him  the  human  qualities  of 


266  W.  E.  FORD 

pity,  mercy,  and  gentleness,  they  were  sorely  hampered 
to  explain  the  apparent  cruelty  not  only  of  that 
expression  we  have  labelled  Nature,  but  also  of  the 
incongruous  tragedies  of  human  fate.  By  one  of  those 
convincing  fallacies  which  have  something  in  common 
with  my  shding  metaphors  of  the  All-thing,  they  came 
to  postulate  that  the  ways  of  God  were  inscrutable, 
while  attempting  still  to  retain  those  essentially 
scrutable  characteristics  of  pity  and  mercy  with  which 
they  had  anthropomorphically  endowed  him.  God 
became  to  us,  therefore,  a  horrible  paradox  of  cruel 
kindness,  and  from  that  our  puzzled  imaginations  were 
reduced  to  contemplating  human  sin  as  a  kind  of 
Absolute  that  might  perhaps  be  eHminated  by  punish- 
ment. The  thought  of  our  own  abasement  gave  a  more 
plausible  colour  to  the  inscrutable  fury  of  God.  If  we 
could  attain  no  such  high  conception  of  His  purity  as 
should  elevate  Him  beyond  all  possibility  of  criticism, 
we  might  reach  towards  the  same  effect  by  lowering 
our  measure  of  human  virtue.  The  older  theologists 
sought,  in  fact,  to  approve  God  by  debasing  the  stand- 
ard of  their  regard  of  Him. 

Ford,  in  all  his  tests  of  the  All-thing,  steadily  refused 
to  humanise  it.  Cruelty  no  less  than  kindness  was  to 
him  a  mode  of  motion,  a  function,  a  phenomenon, 
that  we  judge  by  the  present  standard  of  humanity  in 
a  particular  stage  of  evolution.  He  found  no  absolute 
criterion  in  any  of  these  qualities.  Right  and  wrong 
were  relatives  of  immediate  worth,  but  they  had  foi 


A  FEW  NOTES  ON  FORD'S  PHILOSOPHY    267 

hiri  no  such  intrinsic  qualities  as  marked  them  out 
for  ultimate  permanence.  Indeed,  if  I  were  asked 
to  state  his  absolutes  in  this  kind,  I  could  only  label 
them  as  Obstruction  and  Liberation — a  definition  that 
I  V  ill  consider  later  when  I  come  to  the  question  of  his 
practical  ethic. 

/md  it  seems  to  me  that  if  we  regard  the  large 
problem  of  evolution  from  this  attitude,  all  those 
vapie  questions  concerning  waste  and  superfluity,  the 
ap])arent  regard  for  the  type,  and  the  reckless  cruelty 
to  the  individual ;  all  those  queries  of  purpose  and 
morality  which  strain  towards  an  acceptable  teleology, 
become  suddenly  futile  or  incapable  of  an  immediate 
solution.  I  do  not  find  Ford's  primitive  urge  inscrut- 
able if  I  cease  to  regard  it  as  the  creation  of  a  human 
mind.  The  All-thing  is  not  made  in  man's  image,  and 
man  is  no  more  than  a  mode  of  expression  for  the 
All  thing.  And  if  with  our  limitations  we  seek  some 
definite  hope,  some  goal  at  which  we  may  momentarily 
gaz3  in  this  flitting  instant  of  our  long  journey,  we 
may  find  it  in  newer  words  than  Heaven  and  Hell ; 
in  s  uch  words  as  obstruction  and  liberation,  or  in  the 
thought  of  a  passage  from  conflict  towards  peace. 

lut  all  the  particular  problems  connected  with 
mail's  present  moral,  intellectual,  and  physical  con- 
dition will  surround  us  when  we  leave  the  freedom  of 
our  unlocateable  a  priori  standpoint  and  look  back  at 
our  insurgent  premiss  through  the  circumscriptions  of 
that  empirical  pragmatism  which  appears  to  be  the 


268  W.  E.  FORD 

accepted  criterion  of  social  values.  There  is,  indeed, 
another  criterion,  and,  perhaps,  a  more  important  one, 
I  mean  the  intuitions  of  that  genius  which  is  the  gif  : 
in  a  greater  or  less  degree  of  all  humanity.  But  foi* 
what  we  call  practical  purposes,  every  inspiration  thai; 
touches  the  regulations  of  social  life  must  be  submitted 
to  the  final  test  of  *  Will  it  work  ?  '  In  the  temporal, 
spatial  domain  which  encloses  the  material  complex 
in  a  delicate,  strong  net  of  very  urgent  restrictions,  it 
is  inevitable  that  we  should  attach  a  considerable 
importance  to  the  more  orderly  arrangement  oi 
molecules. 

Before  I  come  to  those  immediate  concerns  of  life, 
however,  I  must  deal  briefly  with  an  intermediate 
problem  arising  out  of  the  main  premiss  and  subsidiary 
to  it ;  a  problem  that  leaves  us  still  outside  the  net. 
Ford's  second  a  priori  proposition  deals  with  the 
subject  of  consciousness. 

His  statement  differs  most  importantly  from  the 
statements  of  such  philosophers  as,  say,  William  James, 
inasmuch  as  Ford  touches  a  greater  unity.  James 
spoke  of  an  *  ocean  of  consciousness,'  and  either  that 
or  any  other  metaphor  of  the  same  kind  presents  the 
antinomies  of  *  spirit '  and  '  matter ' — even  if  the 
matter,  as  James  seemed  to  imply,  is  held  in  suspension. 
Ford  did  not  haggle  over  degrees  of  permeability.  He 
postulated  consciousness  as  a  universal  property  o1 
what  we  call  matter  ;  and  drew  his  differentiating  line, 
not  between  consciousness   and  unconsciousness,  but 


A  FEW  NOTES  ON  FORD'S  PHILOSOPHY    269 

between  consciousness  and  the  potenticdity  for  its 
realisation. 

At  first  sight  his  theory  of  that  scale  of  potentiality 
ma}  appear  as  nothing  more  than  a  piece  of  ingenuity, 
but  when  the  theory  is  put  to  the  widest  test  of  analogy, 
it  gcins  immense  force  by  the  appeal  of  its  appUcation. 
Ford's  key- word  in  this  connection  was  *  Reciprocity.' 
He  :)ostulated  that  the  degree  of  reahsation  necessary 
for  -he  understanding  of  what  we  speak  of  broadly  as 
consciousness,  is  proportionate  to  the  degree  of  reci- 
procity between  the  units  of  consciousness.  (I  deplore 
the  material  significance  of  the  word  '  unit,'  but  each 
and  every  synonym  is  open  to  the  same  objection. 
We  have,  unfortunately,  no  comprehensible  language 
with  which  to  measure  such  abstractions  as  this  ;  and 
'  unit '  has  the  advantage  of  carrying  less  suggestion 
of  solidity  than  such  alternatives  as  molecule  or  atom.) 

Fc  r  the  sake  of  illustration  our  unit  may  be  figured  as 
some  minimmn  translation  of  the  "omnipresent  thrust 
into  spatial  expression.  We  might,  indeed,  express  it 
by  a  a  algebraical  formula,  for,  when  we  enter  the  net, 
the  chief  of  our  restrictions  is  imposed  by  a  fundamental 
matl  ematical  process  working  within  three  or  at  most 
four  dimensions  ;  a  restriction  that  is  imposed  upon  all 
wouli-be  definitive  language.  We  may,  however, 
accei)t  the  word  *  unit '  as  a  reasonably  flexible 
desci  iption. 

It  is  far  harder  to  attempt  a  definition  of  '  reci- 
procity,' a  word  that  in  this  connection  includes  and 


270  W.  E.  FORD 

correlates  a  whole  host  of  values.  It  must,  I  think, 
include  love  for  example  at  one  end,  while  at  the  other 
it  might  express  the  mechanical  relations  of  the  trans- 
mitter and  receiver  of  a  Marconi  apparatus.  We  ma}', 
perhaps,  hold  the  idea  of  reciprocity  as  a  potential 
fimction  of  the  unit,  and  find  instances  of  the  function 
in  phenomena  apparently  so  diverse  as  telepathy  and 
chemical  affinities. 

Ford's  main  premiss  with  regard  to  consciousness 
now  emerges  as  the  postulate  that  the  tendency  of  all 
the  known  manifestations  of  reciprocity  was  towards 
the  reaUsation  of  consciousness.  He  sometimes  found 
a  statement  of  his  antinomies  in  this  proposition  by  using 
the  chemical  terms  crystalloid  and  colloid,  the  former 
representing  the  more  static,  and  the  latter  the  more 
fluid  forms  of  cohesion.  And  in  this  figure  he  further 
assumed  that  the  static  represented  the  more  obstruc- 
tive complex,  while  the  fluid  was  the  more  susceptible 
instrument  that  was  evolving  more  rapidly  towards 
the  ideal  of  expression. 

Nevertheless,  in  this  as  in  his  figures  of  the  primitive 
urge  behind  life,  all  statements  must  be  accepted  as 
presenting  a  material  analogy  which  cannot  be  pressed 
too  far.  And  later,  when  I  come  to  his  theory  of 
'  tenuity  '  in  connection  with  what  is  commonly  called 
genius,  I  shall  have  occasion  to  elaborate,  by  a  moie 
biological  parallel,  the  peculiar  apphcation  of  such 
symbols  as  *  crystalloid  '  and  '  colloid  ' ;  symbols  that 
stood  to  him  as  portraying  the  increasing  diversity 


I 


FEW  NOTES  ON  FORD'S  PHILOSOPHY    271 

tveen  the  inorganic  and  the  organic  forms  of  Ufe. 
For  the  immediate  purpose  of  these  notes,  however, 
I  shidl  accept  the  main  argument  as  having  been  stated 
in  t  le  formula  I  have  adopted,  and  proceed  to  an 
expl  matory  illustration  of  the  theory  with  no  further 
apology  for  any  abrupt  transition  of  metaphor.  Two 
terms,  alone,  will  remain  constant,  namely  that  of 
'  unit '  and  that  of  *  reciprocity,*  both  of  which  have 
been,  in  some  sense,  defined. 

An  illustration  of  Ford's  that  gave  me  a  sense  of 
apprehension,  when  I  first  tentatively  struggled  with 
his  exposition  of  consciousness,  took  for  its  unit  the 
high  exponent  of  individual  hfe.  The  thing  we  know 
as  a  group  consciousness,  he  said,  does  very  evidently 
depend  on  the  degree  of  reciprocity  between  individuak. 
But  beyond  the  small  group  we  come  to  a  still  more 
imperfect  form  in  a  national  consciousness  ;  while  a 
world  consciousness  can  hardly  be  said  to  exist.  The 
diffeiences  being  fairly  attributable  to  the  diminishing 
potentiality  for  reciprocity. 

In  the  small,  more  or  less  selected  group,  for  example, 
such  as  the  congregation  of  a  revivalist  preacher,  the 
sitters  at  a  spiritualistic  siance,  or  the  crowd  at  a 
publi:  meeting,  a  temporary  degree  of  reciprocity  is 
attained  by  the  attention  given  to  a  central  theme. 
The  individual  surrenders  himself  in  a  greater  or  less 
degree  to  the  exhortation  of  the  preacher,  to  the 
thou^  ht  of  the  common  desire  to  witness  some  psychical 
phenomenon,  or  to  the  considered  statement  of  the 


^I 


272  W.  E.  FORD 

public  speaker.  This  surrender  connotes  a  form  of 
free  expression,  which  in  Ford's  argument  is  the  con- 
tinual tendency  of  his  primal  force,  and  as  a  result  of 
the  temporary  failure  of  opposition,  a  higher  form  of 
reciprocity  becomes  immediately  possible,  a  form  that 
is  manifested  as  the  passing  phenomenon  of  a  group 
consciousness.  In  the  larger  instance  of  the  national 
consciousness,  the  common  subject  of  attention  must 
obviously  be  wider  in  scope,  an  instance  of  which  will 
inevitably  occur  to  any  one  in  this  period  of  the  present 
war. 

Now,  it  will  probably  be  urged  that  this  manifesta- 
tion of  the  higher  consciousness  is  open  to  criticism  on 
ethical  grounds.  The  temporarily-created  revivalist 
and  psychic  emotions  will  be  condemned  by  the 
materiahst ;  the  public  crowd's  emotion  by  its  political 
opponents ;  the  fighting  emotion  by  the  pacifist. 
And  all  these  condemnations  can  be  upheld  by  a 
perfectly  sound  pragmatic  argument  based  upon  the 
Vcdues  of  social  benefit.  But  Ford  overrode  all  such 
considerations  as  these  in  his  statement  of  the  broad 
theory.  He  urged  that  the  pragmatic  test  was  no 
more  appUcable  in  this  connection  than  the  char^je 
of  cruelty  levied  against  an  omniscient  God.  Tlie 
phenomenon  was  too  temporary  and  too  various  in 
its  expression  to  be  bottled  for  future  use,  and  t]  e 
only  test  we  could  apply,  he  suggested,  was  the  test  i)i 
potentiality.  And  as  to  that,  there  cannot,  I  think,  'C 
two  opinions.     The  common  emotion  which  animates 


A  FEW  NOTES  ON  FORD'S  PHILOSOPHY    273 

a  crowd  to  a  momentary  union,  may  be  judged  by 
some  passing  standard  as  useless  or  positively  harm- 
ful ;  but  it  is  an  immensely  powerful  and  effective 
force.  And  when  such  a  common  emotion  has  been 
maintained  in  the  furtherance  of  a  common  purpose 
sacied  to  a  particular  group,  the  power  evolved  has 
been  demonstrated  as  capable  of  radically  chang- 
ing the  poUtical,  social,  or  religious  conditions  of  a 
con  inent. 

Another  symbol  for  the  enlargement  of  consciousness 
mig.it  be  taken  from  the  Life  of  the  Bee.  Maeterlinck 
becc  me  aware  of  some  immaterial  entity  that  he  called 
the  '  Spirit  of  the  Hive '  ;  but  less  poetical,  less 
intu  tive  minds  have  been  driven  to  the  same  kind  of 
reso:t  to  explain  the  appearance  of  an  unincorporated 
cons  :iousness  arising  from  a  certain  degree  of  reci- 
proc  ty  between  sufficiently  sensitive  units.  In  this 
instance  of  the  bees  more  particularly,  and  to  a  less 
degr<  e  in  other  examples  of  gregarious  life  (the  law  of 
the  -vv'olf-pack  will  serve  as  another  type),  the  perfect 
subn  ission  of  the  unit  seems  to  be  the  prime  essential 
for  tjie  expression  of  a  group  consciousness — a  deduc- 
tion which  so  continually  faced  Ford  that  he  later 
built  upon  it  his  theory  of  social  philosophy.  Neverthe- 
less, I  very  clear  distinction  must  be  drawn  between 
purpcsive  and  motiveless  submission,  using  both 
expressions  in  relation  to  a  quality  of  deliberateness 
exercised  by  the  unit,  and  not  in  any  sense  as  denoting 
the   result   achieved   by   the   immanent  will,  which, 

s 


274  W.  E.  FORD 

according  to  Ford's  definition,  could  have  no  deliberate 
purpose  as  we  commonly  regard  it. 

The  precise  quality  of  this  attention  or  submission 
cannot  possibly  be  defined  in  the  present  state  of  our 
knowledge ;  though  I  find  in  the  general  attitude, 
another  statement  of  Bacon's  apophthegm  that  Nature 
can  only  be  commanded  by  obe3dng  her.  When  Ford 
first  began  to  talk  his  philosophy  to  me,  I  received  an 
impression  of  some  vaguely  pictured  force  or  purpose 
*  coming  through  '  ;  and  although  I  rather  deprecat(j 
the  slightly  theological  suggestion  of  that  phrase,  it 
has  a  certain  appUcability  in  some  relations.  But, 
indeed,  a  whole  range  of  metaphors  drawn  from  physics 
would  portray  the  outHne  of  the  same  figure.  Any 
sympathetic  vibration  illustrates  an  aspect  of  reci- 
procity and  at  the  same  time  the  appearance  of  the  new 
phenomenon  which  inevitably  arises  out  of  any 
demonstration  of  union.^  And  it  may  well  be  that  in 
different  regions,  a  common  chemical  experiment,  the 
swarming  of  the  hive,  and  the  expression  of  a  national 
impulse,  are  but  unimportant  variants  of  the  same 
simple  theme.  Again,  my  chief  point  is  the  widencss 
of  the  analogy  rather  than  the  appHcability  of  a  single 
instance.  In  expounding  his  theory  of  consciousne  s 
or  his  theory  of  causation.  Ford  sought  to  carry  oi  t 
an  underlying  principle   by  hinting  and  suggesting 

^  Browning  said  the  same  thing  when  he  wrote,  of  a  musicii  i, 
that  out  of  three  sounds  he  framed, 

'  Not  a  fourth  sound,  but  a  star.' 


A  FEW  NOTES  ON  FORD'S  PHILOSOPHY    275 

rather  than  by  the  exposition  of  dogma.  For,  as  I 
hope  to  show  later,  the  plasticity  of  the  human  mind 
illustrates  a  symptomatic  condition  in  this  relation. 

l^astly,  before  I  leave  these  tentative  notes  on  the 
subject  of  consciousness,  I  feel  that  I  must  make  some 
reference  to  those  aspects  of  apparent  negation  illus- 
trated by  the  phenomena  of  sleep  and  death.  No 
physiological  explanation  of  the  former  condition  has 
yet  been  universally  accepted,  but  there  would  seem 
to  be  a  trend  of  opinion  in  favour  of  believing  that 

*  nc  tural  *  death,  or  death  from  old  age,  is  attributable 
broidly   to    some    form    of    physical    crystallisation. 

*  Niitural '  death,  in  fact,  presents  no  real  difficulty  in 
this  connection,  displaying,  perhaps,  an  instance  of 
cun  ulative  physical  obstruction  which  finally  ceases 
to  convey  the  primitive  urge  behind  life.  Death  from 
any  other  known  cause  is  attributable  to  a  like  failure 
of  reciprocity  between  the  imits  of  the  body,  however 
different  the  accident  which  determines  the  immediate 
agert.  The  result  in  every  case  is  the  passing  from 
a  comparative  imison  to  a  more  or  less  absolute 
indi\'idualisation.  Obviously  the  primal  units  of  con- 
sciousness are  for  physical  purposes  indestructible ;  but 
their  separation  connotes  a  cessation  of  the  group 
cons(  iousness  ;  just  as  the  dispersal  of  the  members 
of  the  hive  would  connote  the  disappearance  of  that 
collal)oration  which  Maeterlinck  has  described  as  a 
spirit ,  and  which  has,  indeed,  a  recognisable  entity. 

Sleep  comes  into  quite  another  category,  and  I  find 


276  W.  E.  FORD 

no  inspiration  in  the  poetic  figure  which  hkens  it  to  a 
little  death.  Personally  I  incline  to  the  view  that  there 
is  no  cessation  of  consciousness  either  during  natural 
sleep  or  during  the  failure  of  objective  response 
evidenced  by  a  subject  under  an  anaesthetic.  The 
difference  to  my  mind  is  one  of  manifestation.  It  is 
what  I  have  earher  termed  *  the  potentiality  for 
realisation'  that  has  inexpHcably  fallen.  And  if  I 
am  unwillingly  compelled  to  leave  that  *  inexplicably ' 
confronting  me  with  the  blank  negation  of  the  in- 
soluble, I  find  consolation  in  the  thought  that  this 
problem  belongs  rather  to  the  domain  of  the  physio- 
logist with  his  collaborators  the  physicist  and  the 
chemist,  than  to  that  of  the  philosopher.  Since,  to 
wind  up  this  section  of  the  general  contention,  it  must, 
I  think,  be  quite  clear  by  this  that  the  consciousness 
of  Ford's  premiss  denotes  a  different  concept  from  the 
'  awareness  '  of  current  philosophy.  *  The  spirit  of  the 
hive,'  for  example,  has  been  used  as  a  type  of  group 
consciousness,  but  it  is  impossible  to  postulate  it  as  a 
form  of  awareness  attributable  to  any  individual. 

When  I  first  began  to  discuss  philosophy  with  Ford, 
he  shaped  for  me  a  little  allegory  designed  as  a  bridge 
to  lead  over  my  hesitating  thought  from  the  practical 
application  of  my  starting  point  to  the  unexplored 
region  of  the  abstract  in  which  I  was  then  such  m 
groping  stranger.  I  used  to  call  that  allegory  of  hi: 
*  the  visitor  story.'     It  was  to  me  in  those  days    i 


A  FEW  NOTES  ON  FORD'S  PHILOSOPHY    277 

m(!thod  by  which  I  achieved  distraction ;  and  such 
was  the  frequent  use  I  made  of  it  that  presently  the 
stc  ry  changed  its  function  and  I  came  to  use  it  for  the 
return  instead  of  the  outward  journey.  And  I  propose, 
now,  to  revert  to  that  old  allegory  as  a  means  of  re- 
em  ering  the  net  of  material  life.  I  have,  indeed,  to 
recast  the  form  in  which  the  story  was  given  to  me  ; 
and  I  admit  that  in  my  new  version  Uttle  if  anything 
remains  of  Ford's  original  intention.  He  gave  me  a 
way  of  escape  from  the  throng  of  immediate  worries 
which  beset  me  at  that  time,  and  I  found  an  intel- 
ledual  refuge  whence  I  was  able  to  survey,  a  little 
drunkenly,  perhaps,  the  limitations  of  my  ordinary 
life  And  in  reversing  the  process,  I  lose  more  than 
the  purpose  of  an  anodyne,  since  I  lose,  also,  the 
characteristic  attitude  of  Ford  himself.  As  I  have 
used  it  here,  the  *  visitor  story  '  must  not  be  made  a 
crit  irion  of  Ford's  personal  philosophy. 

The  essential  symbol  of  the  allegory  hovers  about 
tha .  ability  for  abstraction  which  I  once  gained  from 
steadily  regarding  myself  as  a  visitor  to  this  planet. 
Thu  ability  is  a  common  possession  of  ours,  and  the 
kno  vledge  has  weighed  more  with  me  than  any  argu- 
ment in  favour  of  immortality.  We  are  aware  of  two 
worlds,  as  we  are  aware  of  two  (or  more  ?)  selves  ;  and 
just  as  I  am  able  to  hold  a  controversial  and  even  a 
heat  jd  duologue  between  myself  and  me,  so  am  I  able 
to  tike  an  objective  or  a  subjective  standpoint.  The 
abili  y  to  do  these  things  varies   no  doubt  with  the 


278  W.  E.  FORD 

individual,  but  in  every  one  the  power  is  there,  and  may 
be  developed  by  use  much  as  our  physical  co-ordinations 
may  be  developed. 

But,  now,  I  am  not  leaving  the  common  experience 
of  hfe,  but  returning  to  it ;  and  I  want  to  set  out,  as 
lucidly  as  I  may,  the  aspects  of  approach. 

All  that  had  .been  accepted  as  the  conventional 
appearance  of  life  is  become  new  and  strange  during 
the  interval  of  absence.  Language,  the  laws  of 
civihsed  society,  the  restrictions  of  social  intercourse, 
all  the  mechanical  ordinances  that  have  served  to 
check  free  expression,  are  seen  as  brief  artificial 
devices  that  enclose  the  minds  of  man  in  a  brittle, 
imperfect  cage.  This  picture-language  of  ours,  for 
example,  this  language  that  in  its  highest  form  achieves 
poetry  not  by  direct  statement  but  by  delicate  sugges- 
tion of  that  for  which  we  have  no  symbol,  is  built 
almost  exclusively  from  the  metaphors  of  objective 
everyday  experience.  But  coming  as  a  visitor,  I  must 
tediously  learn  some  set  of  imperfect  figures  in  order 
that  I  may  communicate  with  a  few  of  my  fellow- 
visitors,  although  I  may  never  know  them  by  that 
mechanical  intercourse,  nor  can  they  recognise  me. 
We  are  Hke  children  exchanging  gifts.  We  hope  that 
our  little  offering  of  words  may  be  accepted  as  a 
pledge  ;  but  I  know  not  what  my  fellow-child  is  seeking 
in  return  for  his  offering,  which  I,  on  my  part,  may 
despise.  Even  acceptance  is  no  evidence  of  under- 
standing.    If  I  offer  that  for  which  I  find  such  symbols 


f 

A  FEW  NOTES  ON  FORD'S  PHILOSOPHY     279 

as  love,  devotion  or  friendship,  I  may  never  know  by 
ary  further  interchange  of  these  toys  of  language  how 
gratefully  my  offering  has  been  received.  Love  takes 
little  heed  of  words. 

And  in  lesser  matters  than  this,  language  has  little 
pcwer  to  express,  say,  honesty  of  intention.  In 
business  we  are  forced  to  write  our  symbols  on 
pfper  as  an  earnest  that  may  be  submitted  to  an 
arbitrary  court  of  justice  whose  affair  it  is  to  translate 
the  formula  into  action,  by  the  exphcit  or  impHcit 
threat  of  punishment.  So  much  easier  is  it  to  conceal 
than  to  display  our  intentions  by  this  queer  mechanism 
of  intercourse. 

When  we  are  in  the  midst  of  objective  life,  the 
language  we  laboriously  acquire  soon  appears  as  a 
comprehensible,  even  as  a  highly  convenient,  form  of 
exchange  ;  but  the  approaching  visitor  views  it  with 
foreboding  and  dismay. 

And  what  is  true  of  language  is  equally  true  of 
custom,  a  secondary  but  indeed  a  still  more  terrifying 
mechanism.  Presently,  when  I  have  definitely  entered 
the  spatial  and  temporal  realm  which  so  nearly  shuts 
m*;  in  from  any  sight  of  reality,  I  shall  accept  custom 
as  a  rigid  and  essential  ordinance  built  upon  the  experi- 
ence of  the  generations.  The  laws  and  conventions  of 
a  Jittle  group  of  visitors — by  incUning  the  development 
of  some  common  factor  towards  a  formula  for  reci- 
procity within  the  confines  of  a  similar  language — will 
so  bind  me  for  a  time  that  I  may  come  to  regard  these 


28o  W.  E.  FORD 

temporary  rules  as  inspired  ordinances  framed  by  the 
disciplinarian  God  who  is  the  ideal  representative  of 
the  particular  race  I  have  fortuitously  visited. 

Again,  I  shall  find  comfort  and  entertainment  within 
this  Httle  cage  ^  of  matter  ;  I  shall  find  ideals  of  success 
and  personal  happiness  ;  worst  of  all  I  shall  encourage 
obstinate  antagonisms  against  my  fellow-men,  forget- 
ting that  they,  too,  are  visitors  no  less  than  I. 

I  pause  for  an  instant,  already  partly  entangled, 
wondering,  debating.  Is  it  possible,  I  ask,  for  me  to 
remember  my  vision  of  matter  from  without  ?  All 
these  vast  knots  and  intricacies  terrify  me  by  their 
massive  threat  of  obstruction.  I  may  not  forget, 
but  I  shall  soon  be  groping  in  a  tangled  web  of  endless 
restraints.  And  the  only  means  of  stating  and  holding 
my  remembrance  will  be  this  queer,  clumsy  language 
that  has  no  words  for  the  thing  I  struggle  to  remember. 

Two  endowments  alone  are  conferred  upon  me, 
intuition  and  imagination — neither  of  them  definable 
save  by  such  gross  and  clumsy  metaphor  as  leaves 
them  still  inviolable.  .  .  . 

An  analysis  of  Ford's,  concerned  with  social  values, 
that  left  a  particular  impression  on  my  mind,  sprang 
from  a  discussion  of  ours  on  the  subject  of  unselfish- 
ness ;    and  this  subject  provides  such  an  admirable 

*  Sometimes  I  see  it  as  a  cage,  at  others  as  a  net ;  neither  figure 
is  important,  but  I  appreciate  a  distinction  which  marks  a  differ- 
ence of  mood.  The  use  of  the  word  net  comes  with  a  certain 
restive  uneasiness  of  mind,  and  cage  is  the  more  optimistic  simile. 


A  FEW  NOTES  ON  FORD'S  PHILOSOPHY    281 

approach  to  the  whole  question  of  motive  that  I  cannot 
do  better  than  attempt  a  summary  of  our  general 
conclusions  under  that  head.  I  say  our  conclusions, 
for  I  certainly  beheved  at  the  time  that  I  contributed 
vail  able  material  to  the  argument ;  but  Ford  had  a 
way  of  avoiding  credit  for  any  originality,  and  it 
is  quite  probable  that  all  my  share  was  elicited  by  his 
suggestions. 

We  began  by  the  premiss  that  *  unselfishness  '  was 
a  conscious  self-denial,  or  self-expression,  exercised 
in  o  der  to  gain  some  ulterior  object  which  might  or 
migl  t  not  be  consciously  realised.  This  is,  of  course,  a 
version  of  the  old  statement  that  pure  unselfishness  is 
inconceivable,  since  some  personal  reward  inevitably 
follows  an  act  of  denial,  even  although  such  reward 
may  be  nothing  more  than  a  vague  awareness  of  ethical 
consolation  that  will  crown  the  physical  inhibition. 
The  ^enerahsation  is  one  of  considerable  cogency,  and 
has  ( ften  led  to  the  conclusion  that  *  unselfishness '  is 
only  a  relative  term  indicating  a  degree  of  capacity 
for  irimediate  self-forget  fulness. 

Fo  d  took  that  deduction  a  step  further  by  postu- 
lating that  unselfishness  could  never  become  a  true 
virtu« :  until  it  could  be  described  £ls  absolutely  selfish, 
not  ill  motive  but  in  expression.  If  a  friend  of  mine 
is  ill,  he  said,  and  I  sit  up  with  him — an  act  of  self- 
denia"  that  causes  me,  let  us  suppose,  considerable 
physi<al  inconvenience — I  am  obviously  being  rela- 
tively selfish  if  I  stay  with  him,  because  I  hope  to  gain 


282  W.  E.  FORD 

the  reward  of  my  own  approval.  And  this  relati\e 
selfishness  is  a  thing  which  we  have  agreed  on  general 
grounds  to  disapprove,  at  least  for  the  purposes  of  this 
argiunent.  But  if  I  sit  up  with  my  friend  because  my 
feeling  for  him  is  such  that  I  cannot  bear  to  leave  him, 
the  act  takes  quite  a  different  colour.  Obviously  I  aj)- 
pear  in  this  case  to  serve  nothing  but  my  own  desires. 

Such  was  Ford's  general  example,  but  coming  to  it, 
now,  with  the  dehberate  criticism  of  one  who  attempts 
to  enunciate  a  clear  proposition,  I  find  that  half  a  doze  n 
contingents  have  yet  to  be  reconsidered.  When  I 
listened  to  Ford,  I  followed  his  thought  rather  than  his 
actual  words,  but  I  cannot  expect  that  the  prejudiced 
reader — and  nearly  all  readers  are  necessarily  pre- 
judiced— will  take  for  granted  the  various  steps  which 
I  intuitively  leaped. 

In  this  example,  then,  certain  inevitable  miscon- 
ceptions must  be  cleared  away  before  I  can  suggest 
the  ideal  that  cannot  be  absolutely  defined.  In  this  act 
of  what  we  have  called  pure  selfishness,  no  account  can 
be  taken  of  any  future  satisfactions  that  may  pre- 
sently arise.  Assuming  that  the  devotion  is  mine,  I 
do  not,  for  instance,  look  for  my  friend's  gratitude,  so 
it  may  be  further  postulated  that  he  is  unconscious  atid 
will  never  learn  the  part  I  have  played  in  nursing  him. 
Again,  I  am  not  intent  on  saving  him  in  order  tha;  I 
may  continue  to  enjoy  his  company  in  the  future. 
We  must,  in  short,  eradicate  any  aspect  of  human, 
personal  advantage  whether  immediate  or  anticipated, 


A  FEW  NOTES  ON  FORD'S  PHILOSOPHY    283 

whtjther  actively  realised  or  completely  subconscious. 
What  remains  is  as  difficult  of  analysis  as  the  *  dog's 
ten  per '  of  the  Red  Queen's  classic  example,  the  sublime 
and  the  ridiculous  being  nothing  more  than  differences 
of  presentation.  We  may,  in  fact,  say  that  my 
'  temper '  (in  its  right  sense)  is  postulated  as  the  sole 
mot  ive  force  in  the  *  unselfish  '  act  adduced  ;  that 
whet  may  appear  to  the  introspective  as  an  instance 
of  self-denial  is,  indeed,  the  effortless,  motiveless 
expression  of  my  love  for  a  friend.  The  nearest 
recc  gnisable  parcillel  to  such  a  form  of  expression  must 
be  lound  in  the  act  of  a  man  in  a  consuming  rage,  or, 
better  still,  perhaps,  in  the  fury  of  a  madman.  It  is 
esse  itial  to  fix  the  attention  on  the  thought  of  pure 
spontaneity,  avoiding  at  the  same  time  all  the  diffi- 
cult suggestions  that  have  come  to  haunt  the  word 
instinctive. 

N  )w,  if  this  concept  can  be  reached  by  intuition,  it 
will  resolve  our  terms  of  '  selfishness  '  and  *  unselfish- 
ness '  into  an  incongruous  relativity.  Both  terms  are 
practical,  logical,  and  material,  dealing,  in  effect,  with 
some  physical  or  spiritual  bargain.  They  connote 
delil-eration  and  effort,  even  if  the  primary  impulse  be 
so  sudden  as  to  appear  spontaneous  and  the  reward  be  so 
vagiely  imagined  as  to  seem  valueless  as  a  stimulant.  In 
either  case  both  deliberation  and  effort  must  inevitably 
appear  during  the  long  night  watch  of  our  example. 

Oil  the  other  hand,  the  effortless,  motiveless  ex- 
prese  ion  of  our  intuition  has  no  limit  of  duration,  and 


284  W.  E.  FORD 

is  independent  of  any  translation  into  act,  just  as  it 
is  beyond  the  reach  of  our  personal  recognition.  Befoni 
I  can  appreciate  my  own  performance,  the  true  expres- 
sion must  have  ceased.  To  label  the  emotion  with  a 
chche  which  has  a  valuable  if  incomplete  significance, 
I  lose  myself  in  the  thought  of  my  friend. 

Regarded  from  the  practical,  material  standpoint, 
this  pure  expression  of  love,  or  longing,  may  appear  to 
fail  at  the  first  moment  of  introspection.  Directly  I 
pause,  as  it  were,  in  my  long  night  watch  and  begin  to 
probe  my  own  motive,  I  seem  to  become  again  th(3 
selfishly  unselfish  creature  of  the  first  example.  This 
difficulty,  however,  is  only  apparent,  since  thepaus(3 
for  introspection  indicates  a  temporary  failure  of 
expression  and  not  a  cessation  of  the  true  impulse. 
Any  distraction,  such  as  a  moan  of  pain  from  our  un- 
conscious sufferer,  will  immediately  dissipate  the  in- 
terrupting force  of  the  introspective  mind,  and  once 
more  permit  the  free  effusion  of  our  motiveless  longing. 
That  longing  might  perhaps  be  compared  in  this 
instance  with  any  physical  force,  inferentially  con- 
tinuous but  intermittently  exhibited  according  to  th  ^ 
potentiahty  or  condition  of  the  material  agent.  Th.; 
force  itself  neither  ceases  nor  varies  in  kind,  but  th ; 
least  diversion  of  the  recording  instrument  is  sufficient: 
to  interrupt  the  manifestation.  The  power  is  cut  of) , 
the  agent  temporarily  depolarised. 

If  this  instance  be  accepted,  it  must  be  taken  a- 
stating  a  very  important  premiss  with  regard  to  th. 


A  FEW  NOTES  ON  FORD'S  PHILOSOPHY    285 

funcamental  ethic  of  all  human  actions,  inasmuch 
as  the  instance  assumes  an  extraneous  impulse  that  will 
be  rianifested  whenever  the  human  condition  is  such 
as  to  permit  free  expression.  Assuming  this  premiss, 
then,  for  the  sake  of  argument,  we  come  at  once  to  the 
imp(»rtant  consideration  of  conduct  and  moraHty  in 
relation  to  ultimate  development. 

Fcrd  died  before  Glutton  Brock's  book,  The  Ultimate 
Belitf,  was  published,  but  it  seems  to  me  that  there 
is  in  that  work  a  tendency,  not  quite  clearly  expressed, 
to  formulate  one  aspect  of  Ford's  philosophy.  Mr. 
Brock  takes  a  leap — ^not,  in  my  opinion,  quite  justifi- 
able as  yet — and  assumes  that  the  '  extraneous 
impi  Ise  '  of  our  illustration  works  altogether  for  what 
we  call  good.  Ford  would,  I  know,  have  agreed  in 
principle,  but  he  would  have  postulated  that  this 
good  less  is  not  of  the  kind  that  would  at  the  present 
time  be,  without  exception,  recognised  as  morality. 
He  admitted  two  extreme  types,  that  may  be  classified 
as  tfce  free  and  the  inhibited — neither  ever  attaining 
comp  lete  development — and  while  he  asserted  that  the 
free  was  the  ideal  and  the  inhibited  the  stunted  con- 
dition, he  constantly  warned  me  that  the  condition  of 
freedom  was  one  that  was  amazingly  deceptive.  I 
must  however,  state  my  terms  more  broadly  before 
I  con  e  to  the  question  of  stipulations.  And  since  it  is 
the  Ct  sier  of  the  two,  and  a  definition  of  the  contrasted 
condition  arises  out  of  it  by  implication,  I  will  take 
inhibition  as  the  first  subject. 


286  W.  E.  FORD 

Now,  in  the  first  place,  it  is  essential  to  find  some 
means  of  distinguishing  inhibition  from  self-control,  in 
order  to  clear  away  the  suspicion  which  would  other- 
wise inevitably  arise,  that  Ford  intended  to  portray 
ideal  humanity  as  an  automaton,  reacting  to  some 
agency  it  could  not  comprehend.  The  main  difference 
between  these  two  human  abilities  much  resembles  the 
difference  between  courage  and  fear.  The  man  who 
faces  and  conquers  temptation  displays  self-control ; 
the  man  who  runs  away  from  a  temptation  displays 
an  aspect  of  inhibition.  If  I  say  that  I  will  not  permit 
myself  to  think  of  a  sex  longing  and  by  an  effort  of 
will  deliberately  and,  apparently,  successfully  thrust 
the  whole  subject  of  sex  relations  into  some  secr<3t 
chamber  of  my  mind,  I  commit  an  act  of  fear.  I 
admit  that  my  longing  is  so  strong  that  I  dare  not 
face  it.  Nevertheless,  because  the  word  inhibition 
has  been  so  freely  used  by  the  psychologists  and  the 
medical  profession  to  describe  a  normal  act  of  self- 
control,  it  is  as  well  to  throw  all  the  specialised  mean- 
ings of  the  word  into  the  category  of  what  might  be 
called  *  morbid  '  inhibitions.  This  category  would,  in 
my  opinion,  include  any  act  of  self -suppression  that 
had  a  quaUty  of  fear.  I  see  inhibition  in  my  ovn 
thought,  as  being  in  the  nature  of  a  convulsive  clench- 
ing. It  is  a  shutting  out,  a  closing  of  the  mind,  a 
cowering  and  a  denial  of  that  which  sanity  deman  Is 
that  we  should  affirm.  Of  the  physiological  effects  of 
such   morbid   inhibitions    I   need   say   nothing   heie. 


A  FEW  NOTES  ON  FORD'S  PHILOSOPHY    287 

The  psycho-analysts  have  demonstrated  that  this 
convulsive  clenching  of  the  mind  almost  invariably 
leads  to  some  form  of  hysteria,  a  condition  that  may 
ofter  be  cured  when  the  cramp  of  the  original  act  is,  as 
it  were,  released  by  confession.  But  the  moral  effect 
is  fai  more  dangerous,  and  in  one  sense  it  may  be  said 
to  be  contagious,  since  the  inhibited  frequently  come 
to  a  morbid  admiration  for  their  own  ineffectual 
morality  and  preach  it  to  an  ignorant  congregation. 

I  nay,  perhaps,  come  to  a  wider  view  of  the  many 
aspects  of  *  morbid  '  inhibition  by  considering  a  some- 
what bizarre  illustration.  Ford  was  familiar  with  the 
work,  of  Freud  and  Jung  and  had  met  some  of  the 
practical  exponents  of  the  theory  of  psycho-analysis  in 
London  ;  and  it  was  while  he  and  I  were  discussing 
this  1  heory  that  he  gave  me  the  instance  I  am  about 
to  describe.  He  had  begun  by  severely  criticising  the 
limitations  Freud  had  imposed  upon  himself  by  re- 
ferring all  forms  of  hysteria  to  a  sexual  complex,  and 
came  from  that  to  a  sudden  and  startling  dictum  by 
saying  that  the  party  pohtician  was  one  of  the  finest 
instar  ces  of  the  inhibited  mind.  At  first  I  understood 
him  to  mean  the  actual  representative  or  member ; 
but  hi  told  me  that  he  believed  the  greater  number 
of  members  and  certainly  all  those  who  had  risen  to 
high  I  lace  were  free  from  the  pecuhar  obliquity  he  had 
in  mi]  id.  He  touched  on  that  aspect  of  the  House  of 
Comnrons which  presents  it  as  the  ' best  club  in  London,' 
and  confessed  his  belief  that  it  was  very  rare  for  any 


288  W.  E.  FORD 

well-informed  member  of  the  Government  to  be  the 
blind  adherent  of  a  particular  policy.  They  adopt  a 
label,  he  said,  both  for  public  convenience  and  purposes 
of  private  ambition  ;  but  it  is  quite  incredible  that 
any  clear-sighted  man  should  persistently  and  con- 
scientiously vote  *  Liberal '  or  '  Conservative  '  on  any 
measure  before  the  House.  He  then  explained  that 
his  instance  of  the  inhibited  referred  rather  to  the 
typical  middle-  and  upper-class  voter. 

Since  that  conversation — it  must  have  taken  place, 
I  think,  in  the  winter  of  191 2-13 — I  have  made  mary 
applications  of  this  instance  and  have  found  8.n 
appealing  aspect  of  his  theory.  Indeed,  it  can  hardly 
be  denied  that  the  politician  who  deliberately  and 
conscientiously  refuses  to  admit  virtue  in  his  opponent's 
creed,  must  have  inhibited  in  some  degree  his  natural 
tendency  to  acquire  knowledge. ^  To  put  it  more 
plainly,  the  man,  whether  politician  or  religious 
enthusiast,  who  becomes  fanatic  to  the  point  of 
denying  any  kind  of  validity  to  the  unwelcome  state- 
ment is,  or  at  some  time  has  been,  influenced  by  fear. 
The  attempted  explanation  of  absorption  in  a  par- 
ticular line  of  thought  does  not  invahdate  this  state- 
ment, for  although  that  explanation  may  account  for 
an  original  bias  or  eventual  hypertrophy  in  a  particular 
direction,  it  cannot  account  for  the  blindness  of  t  le 
fanatic.    The  specialist  cannot,  for  example,  preteiid 

>  I  must  beg  that  statement  for  the  moment,  but  it  is  implicit  in 
the  whole  of  Ford's  philosophy. 


A  FEW  NOTES  ON  FORD'S  PHILOSOPHY    289 

to  te  an  authority  on  a  subject  outside  his  own  pro- 
vince ;  and  he  cannot  specialise  in  politics,  for  example, 
by  studying  a  single  aspect  of  the  question.  Absorp- 
tion in  the  propaganda  of  a  particular  party,  where 
such  absorption  does  not  arise  from  a  personal,  which 
is  piactically  in  this  sense  an  economic  interest,  must 
imply  that  there  has  been  a  deliberate  denial  of  the 
alteriative  policy ;  and  in  the  case  of  the  common 
exponent  of  this  political  bigotry  I  have  always  found 
that  the  party  enthusiast  was  afraid  to  Usten  to  any 
state nent  of  his  opponents.  But,  indeed,  it  should 
be  evident  that  the  absolute  denial  involved  by  a  blind 
adherence  to  party,  must  constitute  a  form  of  morbid 
inhib  tion  or  obstruction.  And,  although  I  have  taken 
this  ( onvenient  illustration  of  politics  and  mentioned 
the  more  complex  example  of  rehgious  fanaticism,  it 
must  be  imderstood  that  the  argument  applies  with 
varying  force  to  questions  of  beUef  in  all  forms  that 
invoh  e  complete  rejection,  without  sufficient  examina- 
tion, ')f  the  alternative  statement.  The  fear  of  con- 
version, if  it  is  not  freed  by  a  candid  and  liberal 
examination  of  the  imagined  dangers,  can  only  be 
driven  back  by  some  form  of  what  I  have  called  morbid 
inhibitions. 

In  tliis  connection,  however,  it  must  be  clearly  under- 
stood, irst,  that  there  are  degrees  of  resolution,  and  so 
of  effe<  tiveness  in  the  inhibiting  act ;  and,  secondly, 
that  in  applying  the  test,  say,  to  a  man  of  public  reputa- 
tion, it  is  impossible  to  judge  him  by  his  public  writings 

T 


290  W.  E.  FORD 

or  utterances.  Many  Cabinet  Ministers  have  th(3 
fullest  sympathy  with  their  opponents'  policy,  and  hav<i 
persisted  in  their  own,  either  for  purposes  of  privat(3 
interest  or  of  what  they  may  regard  as  temporar/ 
expediency.  Judged  by  the  commonly  prevailing 
standard  of  moraUty,  such  men  are  sometimes  subjects 
for  contempt ;  but  as  a  matter  of  fact  they  have  been 
compelled  by  the  very  convention  which  condemns 
them.  In  a  government  which  is  elected  by  the 
inhibited,  the  free  man  can  find  no  opportunity  for 
action. 

A  further  aspect  of  inhibition,  and  one  that  cannc»t 
primarily  be  included  in  the  '  morbid  '  category,  is  that 
aspect  which  influences  the  common  conditions  of 
social  intercourse.  All  our  ordinary  relations  with 
mankind  necessitate  some  form  of  self-repression, 
the  most  obvious  examples  being  those  arising  froin 
politeness  and  tact.  In  these  examples,  however,  the 
normal,  inhibitive  act  is  merely  one  of  self-control  so 
long  as  nothing  but  our  speech  and  conduct  is  restrained. 
It  is  only  when  the  thought  of  such  natural  desires  as 
would  lead  to  a  rupture  of  social  relations  is  fearfully 
thrust  back  into  the  subconsciousness  that  tlie 
inhibition  may  become  morbid.  It  is  evident  in  these 
examples  that  fear  is  again  the  dominant  impulse ;  and 
that  the  greater  the  fear  of  offending,  the  more 
dangerous  becomes  the  self -suppression. 

Again  the  common  impulse — probably  arising  in  tliis 
case  from  a  sexual  complex — to  shock  a  social  gath  ar- 


A  FEW  NOTES  ON  FORD'S  PHILOSOPHY    291 

ing  by  some  obscene  act  or  expression,  may  be  danger- 
ous to  sanity  if  it  be  mentally  suppressed  with  a 
shudder  of  fear.  Some  release  from  this  inhibition  is 
affcrded  in  dreams — the  characteristic  dream  of 
appearing  naked  among  a  crowd  being  an  instance  ; 
but  any  tendency  to  morbidity  is  avoided  by  a  quiet 
mental  reception  and  examination  of  the  impulse  when 
it  arises.  Where  there  is  no  fear  there  is  no  danger, 
was  one  of  Ford's  obiter  dicta.  But  enough  if  the 
gen  ral  nature  of  morbid  inhibition  and  obstruction 
h£Ls  been  indicated  to  allow  the  emergence  of  its 
opp«)site  as  a  fairly  definite  conception. 

I  have  suggested  in  the  foregoing  paragraphs  that 
Ford  recognised  two  main  forms  of  inhibition.  One 
of  tJiem  comparatively  innocuous  and  hardly  distin- 
guishable from  self-control,  namely,  the  form  in  which 
the  t  bought  is  allowed  free  play  in  the  mind,  and  only 
possible  consequences  of  conduct  and  speech  are 
withlield;  while  the  other  is  that  which  I  have 
called  dangerous,  and  implies  the  terrified  or  shocked 
rejec  ion  of  the  thought  itself.  The  first  of  these  forms 
is  als )  a  form  of  the  antithesis  we  are  now  examining. 
The  acceptance  of  a  thought  and  the  refusal  to  express 
it  in  words  or  action  is  the  higher  form  of  inhibition 
and  t  le  lower  form  of  identification  with  the  primitive 
urge.  The  higher  form  of  the  latter  dares  all  with 
splendid  courage.  But  both  forms  are  essential  to  the 
conduct  of  life  under  present  conditions  ;  or,  perhaps, 


292  W.  E.  FORD 

I  should  rather  say  in  the  present  state  of  our  psychical 
and  physical  development. 

I  must  admit,  however,  that  the  necessity  for  the 
use  of  restraint  in  this  passing  stage  of  our  evolution 
constitutes  a  difficulty  that  Ford  never  made  quite 
clear  to  me.  On  a  priori  grounds  he  found  this 
necessity  hard  to  explain  and  his  nearest  approxi- 
mation to  a  solution  was  probably  the  one  I  indicated 
in  a  previous  paragraph,  namely,  that  our  standard 
of  goodness  is  constantly  changing.  Starting  from  his 
original  hypothesis  he  could  not  deny  the  validity  of 
impulse,  but  he  sought  to  justify  its  expression  to  meet 
the  demands  of  the  multiform  other  impulses  to  which 
it  would  necessarily  be  opposed. 

I  remember  his  speaking  of  the  *  crazy  impatience  ' 
of  Nietzsche  in  this  connection,  and  the  phrase  stuck 
in  my  mind  and  has  furnished  me  with  the  vague  out- 
line of  a  test.  For  it  must  be  evident  that  Ford's 
theory  of  the  rightness  of  free  expression  would,  if  it 
were  pressed  to  its  logical  conclusion,  coincide  exactly 
with  Nietzsche's  principle  of  saying  '  Yea,  to  Life.' 
Yet,  if  we  give  a  free  rein  to  hate,  lust,  and  appetite — 
impulses  which  appear  far  more  general  than  th( 
covering  antitheses  of  love  and  the  desire  for  th« 
beautiful — we  appear  inevitably  to  be  riding  toward - 
destruction.  The  phrase  '  crazy  impatience '  ha :. 
suggested  to  me  the  possibility  of  emergence  from  thir- 
apparently  blind  alley.  Let  me  take  '  Hate  '  as  a  i 
example. 


A  FEW  NOTES  ON  FORD'S  PHILOSOPHY    293 

Now  in  some  forms  hatred  has  been  upheld  as  an 
admirable  quality.  Christ  exhibited  quite  clearly  His 
hatred  of  hypocrisy  and  expressed  it  both  in  His  words 
and  actions  ;  while  hatred  of  injustice  and  oppression 
is  s  3  universally  admired  among  civiUsed  nations,  that 
we  have  boldly  proclaimed  it  as  the  inspiration  of 
En^jland's  motive  for  entering  the  Great  War.  But 
if  ii  be  praiseworthy  to  hate  what  we  call  an  '  evil ' 
prirciple,  how  can  we  avoid  the  inference  that  it  is 
justifiable  to  hate  the  exponents  of  an  evil  principle? 
Chr  St  preached  salvation  by  an  act  of  defensive  meek- 
ness ,  and  drove  out  the  money-lenders  with  a  scourge  ; 
and  it  is  a  lamentable  fact  that  the  gospel  of  love  has 
failed  to  overcome  the  gospel  of  hate  in  the  practice 
of  himan  affairs.  It  would  seem  to  follow,  therefore, 
that  failing  to  convert  the  exponent  of  evil  we  are 
justified  in  meeting  hate  with  hate. 

CcU  we  find  a  way  out  of  this  impasse  without  a 
partial  withdrawal  of  our  premisses,  in  the  thought 
of  that '  crazy  impatience  '  ?  To  me  the  phrase  repre- 
sents at  once  a  qualification  and  a  definition  ;  but  I 
will  c  onfine  myself  to  the  definition  as  the  qualification 
is  imi)licit. 

Le :  us  assume,  then,  that  hate  of  what  we  are 
pleas-  id  to  call  evil  or  obstruction  is  a  natural  impulse 
and  A^orks  for  good  or  liberation  ;  and  beg,  for  a 
momint,  the  question  of  whether  the  subject  of  passion 
can  e  icuse  an  impulse  which  might  be  evil  if  otherwise 
directed.    Beyond  this   I  would  postulate  that  the 


294  W.  E.  FORD 

impulse  of  hate  is  always  courageous,  and  further  that 
many  of  its  supposed  expressions,  such  as  ferocity  or 
brutaUty,  are  so  poisoned  with  fear  that  they  cannot 
be  called  free  ;  but  are,  in  fact,  an  instance  of  craziness. 
And  to  complete  the  analogy  of  our  phrase,  I  would 
submit  that  impatience  must  always  imply  some  inner 
restraint ;  that  we  are  not,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  im- 
patient with  anything  but  our  own  weakness  to  over- 
come a  real  or  imagined  obstacle. 

To  elaborate  the  last  paragraph  I  will  suggest  a 
couple  of  illustrations,  and  ask  first  if  ferocity  oi- 
cruelty  can  possibly  be  the  expressions  of  the  thing  I 
have  in  mind  as  a  spontaneous  impulse  ?  The; 
terrorised  animal,  such  as  the  uniformed  German 
citizen  suspecting  treachery  from  every  member  of  the? 
outraged  Belgian  population,  displays  ferocity.  And 
we  are  told  that  the  greater  part  of  the  German  nation 
displays  the  same  tendency,  occasionally,  against  th(i 
threat  of  English  interference.  But  I  insist  without 
hesitation  that  the  instance  is  essentially  one  of 
inhibition.  I  do  not  believe  that  the  average  German 
citizen  can  exhibit  pure  impulsive  hate.  He  has  been 
terrified,  and  in  defence  he  has  inhibited  all  his  natural 
desire  towards  fraternity,  towards  peace,  towards  i 
sentimental  good  humour  so  far  as  the  English  aie 
concerned.  (The  English,  not  England  ;  that  stands  i  o 
him  merely  as  a  meaningless  symbol  of  an  imagine  d 
evil.)  He  dare  not  consider,  much  less  liberate,  hs 
natural  gentleness.     He  has  thrust  it  far  back  into  1:  is 


I 


A  FEW  NOTES  ON  FORD'S  PHILOSOPHY    295 

subconsciousness,  as  a  danger  and  an  obstacle  that 
may  prevent  his  winning  the  War.  And  every  word 
of  this  condemnation  applies  to  ourselves  not  less 
thin  to  our  present  enemies.  This  hate  of  ours  and 
th  iirs,  represents  a  deliberate  clenching  of  our  natural 
expression.  There  is  nothing  courageous  or  liberating 
in  this  hate  that  finds  emergence  in  ferocity. 

[n  the  same  way  I  would  urge  that  impatience 
al\vays  implies  some  inner  suppression,  or  even  that 
impatience  is  nothing  more  than  a  symptom  of  a 
divided  mind,  of  desires  thwarted  by  our  inability  to 
find  free  expression.  To  take  a  paltry  instance — as 
prcjbably  the  more  difficult  example  to  explain — if  I 
fumble  with  a  knot  in  my  boot-lace  and  finally  break 
it  in  exasperation,  I  exhibit  the  symptoms  of  a  double 
purpose.  On  the  one  hand,  I  have  lacked  the  con- 
ceritration  to  disentangle  the  knot ;  on  the  other,  I 
har'e  not  at  once  put  that  intention  away  from  me  and 
solved  the  problem  by  an  exercise  of  strength.  And 
it  \vould  be  quite  easy  to  prove  that  every  symptom 
of  impatience  is  due  to  a  similar  opposition  of  two  or 
more  half-expressed  intentions.  The  bar  that  thwarts 
us  is  not  the  material  or  psychical  opposition  we  meet 
from  without,  but  our  own  inability  to  find  the  single 
countervailing  force  of  expression.  Impatience,  in  fine, 
derotes  hesitation  ;  and  hesitation  implies  the  need  for 
inhibiting  one  or  more  modes  of  thought  or  action. 

Trom  these  illustrations  we  come  to  a  thought  of 
our  ideal  impulse  of  hate  as  being  in  its  essence  a  single 


296  W.  E.  FORD 

desire ;  and  we  must  therefore  exclude  from  our 
consideration  all  those  apparent  examples  of  hate  which 
imply  a  mixed  intention,  and  thus  the  necessity  for 
the  suppression  of,  say,  a  counterbalancing  ethical 
motive.  And  I  do  not  believe  (I  join  issue  here  with 
Mr.  Glutton  Brock's  theory  expressed  in  The  Ultimate 
Belief)  that  human  hatred  ever  finds  this  singleness  of 
impulse  unless  the  cause  of  the  hatred  is,  in  some 
sense,  a  righteous  one.  We  have  moved  too  far 
towards  sympathy  and  understanding  to  hate  the 
unoffending.  Hate  is  a  natural  impulse  and  a  wonder- 
ful power,  but  it  can  never  find  pure  expression  unless 
it  is  great  enough  to  be  as  single-minded  as  love. 
Indeed,  I  am  not  sure  that  hate  and  love  are  necessarily 
opposites.  It  seems  possible  that  if  we  could  refine 
our  definitions  to  absolute  purity,  we  might  reach  the 
single,  undiluted  base  of  both  emotions. 

This  long  diversion  has  taken  me  somewhat  away 
from  my  exposition  of  Ford's  philosophy,  inasmuch 
as  I  have  been  striving  to  justify  him  by  an  inductive 
process  of  my  own — a  risky  task  for  the  exegete. 
At  the  same  time  I  believe  that  my  attempted  analysis 
has  done  something  to  indicate,  if  only  by  implication, 
an  important  principle  of  his  general  theory.  So  much 
depends  on  that  '  singleness  of  mind,'  I  have  deliber- 
ately insisted  upon  ;  a  description  that  denotes  not 
the  narrow-minded  fury  of  the  fanatic,  but  a  conscious- 
ness of  unity  with  all  life,  with  something  more  than 
physical  humanity. 


A  FEW  NOTES  ON  FORD'S  PHILOSOPHY    297 

In  a  former  paragraph  I  made  reference  to  Ford's 
phrase  the  *  tenuity  of  genius,'  and  as  this  chapter 
does  not  purport  to  be  anything  more  than  a  haphazard 
collection  of  notes,  I  may  adduce  that  instance  here  as 
a  farther  commentary  on  the  fundamental  theory. 
*  T(  nuity,'  in  this  sense,  does  not,  of  course,  denote 
'  thinness,'  but  was  used  in  its  derivative  meaning  as 
applied  to  fluids,  and  indicates — if  I  may  put  it 
negitively — a  lack  of  density.  The  quality  of  mind 
tha  ;  is  exhibited  as  genius,  had  in  it,  according  to  Ford, 
sorrething  peculiarly  subtile,  and  as  it  were  discrete. 
On  the  other  hand,  I  remember  his  using  one  of  his 
hasry  figures  and  saying  that  the  particles  of  the  man  of 
gen  us  behaved  like  steel  filings  in  a  magnetic  field, 
'  leaping  to  arrangement  and  interpretation.'  But 
both  figures  imply  mobihty,  and  that  is,  perhaps,  the 
more  inconclusive  concept.  And  to  mobility  again 
must  be  added  the  idea  of  a  higher  potential  for  that 
reci])rocity  between  the  units  which  was  discussed  in  its 
rela'  ion  to  consciousness. 

A  1  these  phrases  and  figures,  however,  must  not  be 
too  rigorously  related  to  a  physical  conception.  The 
base  of  our  unit  as  discussed  in  an  earlier  paragraph  is 
not  material  but  spiritual.  At  the  same  time  there  is 
no  absurdity  in  the  assumption  that  this  primitive 
spiritual  unit  should  obey  those  laws  which  we  have 
hype  thecated  as  controlling  the  limitations  of  matter. 
Wlicn  we  come  to  examine  those  '  laws,'  indeed,  we 
find  that  no  one  of  them  is  susceptible  of  an  a  priori 


298  W.  E.  FORD 

explanation.  Are  we,  for  example,  quite  unable  tC' 
prove  that  the  law  of  gravitation  might  be  sus- 
pended in  certain  conditions  which  do  not  happen  to 
have  occurred  within  human  experience  ?  We  have 
no  more  knowledge  of  the  true  '  how '  and  *  why  '  oi 
gravitation  than  we  have  of  the  intentions  of  God. 

For  these  reasons  I  maintain  that  there  is  no  inherent 
absurdity,  even  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  physicist, 
in  postulating  an  ultimate  atom  which  is  not  material 
and  yet — in  the  complexes  that  alone  permit  oui 
awareness  of  its  functions — conforms  within  human 
experience  to  certain  inferred  principles  of  apparently 
mechanical  conduct.  And  it  is  this  elusive,  undefinable 
unit  which  Ford  referred  to,  in  his  suggestion  of  greater 
*  mobihty  '  in  the  composition  of  the  mere  physical 
structure  of  the  man  whom  we  recognise  as  a  genius. 
He  always  avoided  the  use  of  such  words  as  brain  or 
mentality  in  this  connection  ;  agreeing  with  Samuel 
Butler  that  we  are  far  too  apt  to  relate  all  physical 
phenomena,  such  as  that  of  memory,  to  this  single 
function.  He  admitted  that  he  was  unable  to  give  a 
precise  value  to  that  function  in  the  human  economy. 
It  might,  he  thought,  be  a  predominant  one.  But  he 
inclined  to  believe  that  the  work  of  the  brain  waj; 
primarily  one  of  correlation  rather  than  of  initiative  ; 
while  he  always  assumed  that  what  we  call  characte  • 
or  personality  was  inherent  in  the  constitution  of  thr 
individual  as  a  whole  and  depended  largely  on  that  con  • 
stitution's  potentialities  for  mobility  and  reciprocity. 


FEW  NOTES  ON  FORD'S  PHILOSOPHY    299 

With  such  assumptions  it  becomes,  I  think,  increas- 
ingly evident  that  the  man  of  genius  is  one  who 
mcbihses  most  easily  into  *  arrangement  and  inter- 
pretation '  under  the  impulse  of  the  primitive  urge  ; 
an  i  so  is  able  to  reveal  some  fraction  of  that  universal 
content,  which  this  *  primitive  urge  '  of  ours  is  always 
seeking  to  express.  And  if  we  make  application  of 
this  wide  principle  to  the  meagre  data  we  have  so  far 
collected  as  bearing  on  the  problem  under  consideration, 
we  shall  find  that  the  empiric  or  pragmatic  test  may 
be  reasonably  satisfied — possibly  to  the  complete 
reconciUation  of  Nordau  and  Shaw. 

.Vs  an  example  of  this  application  I  may  note  that 
genius,  according  to  Ford,  must  be  vagarious  if  it  is 
to  come  to  its  fullest  expression.  To  apply  the  more 
or  less  mechanical  formula  suggested  above,  the 
arrangement  which  tends  to  become  static  destroys 
its  own  value  for  interpretation.  In  the  attempt  to 
ex])ress  an  universal  it  is  fatal  to  crystallise  an 
ab^  traction,  for  it  then  inclines  to  become  obstructive. 
Ni<;tzsche  is  an  excellent  instance  of  this  principle. 
So  long  as  he  remained  mobile  to  the  creative  suggestion 
he  was  an  immensely  valuable  interpreter.  But  when 
he  fell  in  love  with  his  own  abstraction,  he  shut  out, 
as  t  were,  all  impulses  that  did  not  subserve  his  imme- 
diate  purpose,  which  then  became  cramped,  didactic, 
inconclusive.  The  effect  upon  himself  was  inevitable. 
His  high  original  potentiality,  or,  in  other  words,  his 
sersitivity,  indicated  a  force  strong  enough  to  inhibit 


300  W.  E.  FORD 

what  he  regarded  as  antagonistic  impulses,  all  too 
completely.  Thus  he  lost  his  capacity  for  mobiUty 
and  mobihty  being  an  essential  fimction  of  his  char- 
acter as  a  man  of  genius  he  destroyed  himseli 
by  assuming  rigidity.  Or  it  may  seem,  Ford  said 
abruptly  changing  the  metaphor,  as  if  he  had  drowned 
himself.  While  he  kept  all  his  gates  open  to  the  flood 
the  stream  poured  through  him,  but  when  he  closed 
one  after  another  until  only  one  was  left,  the  flood  rose 
higher  and  higher  until  he  was  swept  away.  For  a 
time,  you  know,  it  looks  as  if  we  were  doing  an  immense 
work  with  that  one  open  gate — the  rush  is  so  terrific. 
But  it  can't  last.  There  must  be  other  outlets.  That 
single  gate  is  known  to  us  pathologically  as  the  idee 
fixe. 

And  that  metaphor  may  help  us  to  explain  the 
apparent  immorality  of  some  men  of  genius.  They 
must  open  their  volitions  to  other  impulses  or  be 
drowned.  But  sometimes  those  other  gates  are  drawn 
too  high,  and  then  the  stream  of  interpretation  may 
dwindle  to  the  veriest  trickle.  *  Again  you  may  find 
another  illustration  of  what  I  mean  in  my  metaphors,' 
he  once  wrote  to  me,  '  the  single  illustration  that  tends 
to  crystallise  the  idea  is  an  awful  snare.  You  cannot 
express  genius  in  a  purely  physical  formula.' 

I  am  uncomfortably  aware  that  these  notes  are 
lamentably  insufficient,  but  I  dare  not  expand  them. 
I  see  only  too  clearly  that  if  I  once  permit  myself  tc 


A  FEW  NOTES  ON  FORD'S  PHILOSOPHY    301 

attempt  a  fuller  exposition,  all  the  first  part  of  this 
boc  k  will  shrink  to  a  mere  preface  in  comparison  with 
the  immense  work  I  feel  so  strongly  inclined  to  write. 
That  work,  however,  must  be  postponed  until  I  have 
the  leisure  to  collate  Ford's  material.  Meanwhile  I 
mu^t  point  out  that  what  I  have  written  here  must  not 
be  subjected  to  too  intensive  or  stringent  criticism. 
All  that  I  have  attempted  in  this  place  is  suggestion, 
I  hive  found  in  Ford's  philosophy  the  hint  of  a  new 
asp  3ct ;  and  I  have  striven  to  convey  that,  often  to  the 
detdment  of  a  logical  statement. 

I5ut,  indeed,  although  a  reasoned  analysis  must 
succeed  to  this  mere  indication  of  a  test  and  a  formula, 
I  know  that  the  analysis  must  tend  to  narrow  and 
obstruct  the  fundamental  principle.  It  is  the  limita- 
tior  of  the  logical  method  that  it  attempts  too  complete 
an  (  xposition,  and  so  crystallises  a  part  to  the  rejection 
of  all  those  apparently  contradictory  impulses  that  also 
seek  expression.  ^The  analogy  of  Ford's  primary 
assumption  nms  through  every  example.  We  cannot 
exp  -ess  the  whole,  but  the  danger  of  morbid  inhibition 
lies  behind  every  denial.  And  Ford  would  agree  with 
me  n  affirming  that  a  positive  immoraUty  (as  we  now 
rega  rd  it)  is  a  far  more  admirable  thing  than  a  negative 
virt  le. 

J.  D.  B. 


A  FURTHER  NOTE  ON  FORD'S  PHILOSOPHY 

By  K.  R. 

I  CONSIDER  that  Ford  Wcls  not  so  much  a  philosophei- 
as  a  man  who  tried  to  live  in  the  Hght  of  a  philosophical 
outlook — or,  to  put  it  better,  of  a  philosophical  *  in- 
look.'  His  philosophy  was  primarily  felt,  and  only 
incidentally  formulated.  He  seemed  at  times  to  reach 
back  into  hidden  recesses  of  his  mind  and  to  draw  upon 
a  subconscious  store  of  wisdom  ;  at  other  times  he 
seemed — I  can  only  put  it  in  this  way — literally  to 
create  wisdom.  The  point  which  I  feel  I  must 
emphasise  is  that  every  expression  of  his  philosophy 
to  which  he  gave  voice  was  an  ad  hoc  expression. 
Devoted  to  synthesis,  to  the  mental  task  of  viewing 
reality,  value,  and  purpose  as  a  coherent  unity,  he  no 
sooner  gave  thought  to  the  smallest  significant  pro- 
blem than  he  made  it  an  essential  fragment  of  the 
universal  problem  ;  but  for  him  the  universal  existed, 
to  be  explored  by  intuition  in  the  interests  of  the 
immediate.  He  maintained  that  one  cannot  con- 
sciously build  up  an  intellectual  conception  of  the 
universe  without  gradually,  and  at  last  completely 
exchanging  interest  in  the  universe  for  interest  ir 
dialectic.     He  had  a  constructive  philosophy,  but  i1 

302 


FU  RTHER  NOTE  ON  FORD'S  PHILOSOPHY    303 

was  intuitional,  and  that  is  why  neither  Beresford  nor 
I  cm  explain  how  he  constructed  it.  He  let  the 
material  recede  into  the  back  of  his  mind  and  the 
philosophy  constructed  itself ;  that  is  one  way  of 
put  ing  it. 

Or  I  could  say  that  he  treated  intuition  as  a  faculty 
thai  can  be  trained  by  practice  in  its  function  of 
app  -ehending,  by  degrees,  the  nature  of  the  imiverse  ; 
this  best  expresses  my  own  notion  of  the  matter,  and, 
I  th  nk,  best  renders  Ford's  notion,  but  to  postulate  this 
subconscious  function — or  superconscious  function, 
cLS  I  should  prefer  to  call  it — is  to  make  a  very  large 
prior  assumption.  I  will  therefore  leave  open  the 
hyp  )thesis  of  superconscious  constructive  thought  (an 
idea  familiar  to  any  one  who  has  ever  *  slept  on '  a 
knotty  problem)  side  by  side  with  that  of  supercon- 
scioiis  apprehension  of  existing  structure  ;  without 
prej  idice  to  the  further  possibiUty  that  the  two 
hyp< ) theses  may  be  related  aspects  of  the  same  truth. 

N  )w,  in  presenting  to  Beresford  the  nearest  approach 
that  he  ever  made  to  a  formal  statement  of  his  philo- 
sophical position,  Ford  was  none  the  less  following  his 
usual  practice  and  interpreting  his  intuition  for  the 
furtlierance  of  an  immediate  end.  (I  need  hardly 
labo  ir  the  point  that  the  more  strictly  immediate  an 
end,  the  more  it  excludes  ulterior  motive.)  And  the 
end  n  this  case  finds  its  fulfilment  in  Beres ford's  fore- 
going,' chapter.  It  was  to  elicit  a  view  of  the  universe 
that  he  and  Beresford  could  hold  in  common.    Hence 


304  W.  E.  FORD 

Beresford's  difficulty  in  knowing  how  much  is  Ford'si 
and  how  much  his  own.  WKen  Ford  gave  you  an  idea 
he  kept  no  mortgage  upon  it  himself ;  he  made  it 
your  own  idea  by  unrestricted  deed  of  gift.  And  to 
give — to  give  effectually — was  always  the  most  imme- 
diate of  his  aims. 

What  I  have  just  written  would  imply  a  criticism 
of  Beresford's  presentation,  were  it  not  that  it  rein- 
forces his  claim  to  make  that  presentation  as  much  of 
a  personal  re-interpretation  as  he  chooses.  Beresford 
has  spoken  of  our  difference  of  view  as  to  the  teleo- 
logical  trend  of  Ford's  philosophy.  I  will  not  try  to 
show  how  his  presentation  could  be  converted,  by 
certain  differences  of  proportionate  emphasis  without 
any  change  of  substantial  statement,  into  a  teleology 
qualified  only  by  necessary  human  incomprehension. 
I  only  mention  that  this  would  be  possible,  so  that  in 
speaking  further  of  Ford's  doctrine  of  immediate  ends — 
which,  unless  it  is  teleological,  is  pragmatism  un- 
mitigated and  abominable — I  may  not  lose  essential 
touch  with  that  region  of  his  intuitive  speculations  which 
Beresford  has  portrayed. 

For  the  practical  Ford,  the  Ford  of  daily  ingenuities 
and  expediencies  in  school  work,  was  identical  with 
the  Ford  whom  we  remember  reaching  back  into  the 
depths  of  his  mind — or  the  depths  beyond  his  mind — 
for  that  conception  of  '  the  primary  urge  behind  life.' 
But  when  I  think  of  his  philosophy  as  expressed  in 
daylight  action,  my  instinct  (I  am  willing  to  underline 


FURTHER  NOTE  ON  FORD'S  PHILOSOPHY    305 

the  '  my  ')  pictures  him  as  hstening  and  responding  to 
a  whispered  call  from  before,  rather  than  as  yielding 
to  c.  suggestive  pressure  from  behind.  As  the  parents 
used  to  say  of  their  children,  he  could  be  led  but  he 
cou  d  not  be  driven.  The  distinction  is  only  a  symbol- 
ism in  connection  with  a  *  primary  urge,'  which  must  be 
con«  '.eived  as  extra-spatial  and  extra-temporal ;  but  it 
matters  a  good  deal  to  my  present  purpose. 

I  have  given  some  slight  indication  of  Ford's  views 
abo  it  the  function  of  intuition  in  framing  a  cosmo- 
logy ,  and  Beresford  has  caught  the  authentic  thrill 
of  his  venturous  journeys  into  the  darker  unknown  ; 
it  needs  an  effort  of  imaginative  understanding  to 
co-o  dinate  this  with  the  principle  of  immediate  ends 
whi(  h  was  the  basis  of  his  practical  philosophy  of  life. 
Still  this  principle  can  be  defined  in  terms  of  intuition 
— of  intuition  in  league  with  intellect.  The  immediate 
end  is  the  end  towards  which  no  secondary  or  ulterior 
motive  points  ;  it  is  the  end  dictated  by  the  nearest 
poss.ble  approach  to  pure  volition.  An  act  of  volition, 
Ford  would  maintain,  was  *  pure  '  in  so  far  as  it  was 
pron  pted  by  intuition  alone  ;  the  function  of  intellect 
was  to  keep  open  the  right  intuitive  channel,  by 
recognising  ulterior  motives  and  holding  them  on  one 
side.  Not  that  an  ulterior  motive,  in  his  view,  was 
necee  sarily  irrelevant  to  right  action ;  it  was  often 
extremely  relevant,  but  always  subordinate.  Pure 
volition  had  first  to  be  isolated  in  the  mind  (he  char- 
acter sed  tills  as  a  clumsy  description  of  a  very  swift, 

u 


3o6  W.  E.  FORD 

habitual  form  of  mental  action)  ;  it  had  then  to  be 
set  free  along  the  open  channel,  drawing  relevant 
motive  after  it  in  its  course,  leaving  irrelevant  motive 
behind.  The  union  of  this  conception  with  Beresford's 
formula  of  '  effortless,  motiveless  expression  '  will  be 
obvious  enough,  and  I  can  turn  to  its  practical  applica- 
tion, especially  its  appUcation  to  the  teaching  oi 
children. 

It  seems  to  me  that  Ford  got  right  away  from  the 
usual  pendulum-swing  between  the  morbidly  intro- 
spective and  the  cheerfully  conscienceless  view  oi 
conduct,  by  putting  his  finger  upon  the  true  function 
of  the  introspective  faculty.  Simple  action  upon 
impulse,  entirely  non-moral  as  far  as  the  consciousness 
is  aware,  has  the  general  approval  of  mankind  in  spite 
of  its  obvious  dangers  :  even  in  the  case  of  crime,  we 
condone  the  crime  of  impulse  while  we  condemn  the 
crime  of  intention.  The  problem  is  to  interpose  the 
conscious  censorship,  the  conscious  inhibition  (later, 
of  course,  to  become  habitual  and  in  that  sense  sub- 
conscious) without  clogging  the  passage  for  pun? 
volition.  Ford  believed  that,  instinctively  fearing; 
this  obstruction,  we  shrink  from  applying  introspection 
and  inhibition  until  something  has  gone  manifestly 
and  imcomfortably  wrong  ;  and  then  it  is  too  late  fo: 
the  right  use  of  the  unpractised  power.  Consequently , 
he  taught  children  to  sift  their  own  motives  continually , 
as  a  kind  of  mental  game,  and  so  to  give  the  intro- 
spection-faculty   continual    practice    upon    materia) 


FURTHER  NOTE  ON  FORD'S  PHILOSOPHY    307 

thai  was  not  painful  to  touch  ;  thus,  he  beheved,  a 
habit  of  easy,  rapid  and  entirely  healthy  introspection 
was  encouraged.  On  the  other  hand,  he  never  fostered 
introspection  when  a  child  was  in  some  small  crisis 
of  difficulty,  but  waited  for  the  inflammation  to 
subside. 

I  was  puzzled  as  to  the  process  by  which  inhibitions 
coul  i  be  ranged,  as  in  the  mental  picture  he  had  given 
me,  to  form  as  it  were  a  guard  of  honour  for  pure 
vohtion  ;  his  only  explanation  was  that  they  arranged 
themselves,  when  once  the  healthy  habit  of  mind  was 
in  o])eration.  They  became  knotted  and  obstructive 
(he  twisted  his  fingers  together  to  convey  a  sense  of 
painiul  tension)  when  they  had  been  habitually  apphed 
to  none  but  the  '  sore  places  in  the  consciousness.'  We 
seem  to  touch  here  upon  the  genesis  of  those  inhibitions 
due  to  fear  of  which  Beresford  has  spoken. 

Fod  left  the  picture  of  normal  inhibitions  con- 
stitul  ing  a  *  guard  of  honour '  for  pure  volition,  to  stand 
as  his  meaning  while  he  cleared  the  field  of  discussion  ; 
but  h  i  meant  more.  The  fimction  of  intellect  in  morals 
was  r  ot  merely  negative  and  restrictive.  It  was  also 
directive  ;  and  it  is  here  that  the  word  inhibition  fails. 
A  gaj-pipe,  he  said,  inhibits  the  gas  from  escaping 
where  it  is  not  wanted  and  would  be  dangerous  ;  but 
it  alsc  performs  the  very  positive  function  of  directing 
the  gis  to  the  precise  places  where  illumination  is 
nccdc'l  ;  and  he  sketched  a  conception  of  the  moral 
consci  )usness  as  a  system  of  flexible,  sentient  tubes — 


3o8  W.  E.  FORD 

subtle  tentacles  of  mind-stuff — ready  at  a  moment's 
notice  to  dart  a  jet  of  volition  into  the  right  place. 
But  this  figure  erred  on  the  other  side,  making  vohtion 
too  subservient,  unless  one  imagined  that  the  nature 
of  the  volition  determined  the  direction  to  be  accorded 
for  its  own  best  expression. 

I  am  trying  to  give,  by  means  of  fugitive  hints  and 
recollections,  some  notion  of  the  way  in  which  Ford- 
related  his  wide  intuitive  conception  of  the  nature  ol" 
the  universe  to  the  particular  problem  of  everyday 
morals.  Perhaps  I  can  best  sum  up  that  relation  by 
saying  that  he  saw  the  '  primary  urge  '  as  functioning 
through  an  unthinkable  multiplicity  of  channels, 
constituting  in  total  a  resistance,  like  the  resistance' 
of  a  vast  and  complex  electrical  circuit,  through  which 
only  a  power  of  unthinkable  magnitude  could  manifest 
itself.  And  the  microcosm  of  human  individuality  ie; 
also  a  complex  ramification  of  resistances,  through 
which  volition  plays,  breaking  down  and  re-fashioning 
the  structure  in  the  course  of  self-expression.  No 
man  can  come  near  to  expressing  his  own  total  volition . 
his  own  small  share  in  the  *  primary  urge,'  except  hi 
rare  moments  of  high  passion  ;  the  moral  problem 
in  the  main  is  that  of  directing  volition  througli 
resistance.  And  here  the  practical  question  aboui: 
vohtion  itself  arises  :  what  is  the  objective  of  will  ? 
Ford's  principle  of  inamediate  ends  furnishes,  I  thin! , 
a  much  -  to  -  be  -  desired  point  of  union  between  th  :^ 
volitional  principle  and  practical  morality.     It  giver. 


FURTHER  NOTE  ON  FORD'S  PHILOSOPHY    309 

to  true  immediacy  the  dignity  of  an  ultimate — of  The 
Ultimate. 

We  are  still  in  the  cold  as  to  the  nature  of  that 
motiveless  motive  (the  naked  paradox  is  unavoidable) 
which  hes  behind  the  merely  temporary  explanation  of 
irr  mediacy .  What  volition  is  there  that  is  in  no  sense 
m<:diate  ?  I  can  draw  an  answer  only  from  Ford's  Ufe 
and  character;  he  never  stated  his  final  principle  in 
so  many  words.  But  I  come  to  a  conclusion  which 
Bi  resford's  presentation  has  foreshadowed  in  assigning 
an  ultimate  value  to  the  principle  of  reciprocity.  Here 
I  im  afraid  of  colouring  Ford's  philosophy  with  an 
esc  hatology  of  my  own  to  which  I  cannot  be  sure  that 
he  would  have  assented,  though  personally  I  feel  it  to 
be  in  essentiad  unity  with  his  thought.  But  I  am  on 
saf  3  ground  in  sa5dng  that  fellowship — service — the 
constructive  union  of  human  vohtions — in  a  word,  that 
Lo/e  was  the  one  immediate  principle  of  his  own 
pre  ctical  morality ;  and  I  can  scarcely  hesitate  to  go 
further,  and  to  say  that  he  believed  in  some  ultimate 
syr  thesis  in  terms  of  Love.  Or — if  I  continue  to  grope 
for  definitions  in  a  region  where  the  intellectual 
boindaries  fade  and  disappear — ^that  this  S37nthesis 
wa.'  not  so  much  ultimate  as  perpetual,  and,  because 
per oetual,  eternal,  timeless.  Ford  was  more  sternly 
sincere  in  facing  the  implications  of  reality  than 
any  man  whom  I  have  known ;  and  he  also,  more 
than  any  man  whom  I  have  known,  put  his  trust 
in     eality,    with   all   its   paradoxes,    its    bewildering 


310  W.  E.  FORD 


1 


maze  of  indeterminate  equations.  Some  inner  sense 
in  him  was  satisfied  by  that  exacting  and  laborious 
service.  He  decUned  to  fall  back  upon  comfortable 
illusions  of  certainty.  I  can  see  no  other  interpretation 
than  that  he  surmised  a  purpose  in  life,  implying 
a  realisation  of  triumph  and  joy  in  that  Immediate 
which  is  our  window  upon  the  Eternal. 


1 


THE    END 


Printed  by  T.  and  A.  Constablb,  Printers  to  His  Majesty, 
at  the  Edinburgh  University  Press. 


YB  ■■    ■  ' 


■  '  I 


